


Five Conversations That Probably Happened, and One That Didn't

by peterqpan



Series: Teen Wolf Dogpile [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkwardness, Canonical Character Death, Coda, Derek Is So Done, Fluff and Angst, Formatting war, I keep fixing it, M/M, Missing Scene, SO SORRY, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Slow Burn, Stiles is an awkward person and also kinda gross, The italics they fight the punctuation, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-07-12 16:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15999287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterqpan/pseuds/peterqpan
Summary: "Derek listened to Stiles’ heart rate, thinking he would have to listen to a gerbil sometime, and compare.  Their similarity might actually come in handy--they could build Stiles a wheel, to run on when he wouldn’t shut up about pants."In which Stiles is a Weapon Of Mass Noise, and Derek is unexpectedly Not Dead.These are "deleted scenes" for canon times Derek and Stiles were together, so there are spoilers for seasons 1-3a.  I try to give a good idea what's happening before I start in, though, if you haven't seen it in a while!





	1. They were in that jeep for quite some time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bavzel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bavzel/gifts).



> Happy, happy birthday, Bavzel! How very convenient that you requested 5+1, when that's what I'd already (mostly) written! I'll try to update this on Wednesdays and Saturdays until it's done! Apparently it's illegal in CA for Stiles to drive around at night with Scott if he's sixteen, so I'm gonna say he's seventeen at the beginning and eighteen by the end. Ha!
> 
> Sorry about the spacing! It keeps adding spaces around punctuation! I keep deleting them! WAR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during season one episode four, when Kate's shot Derek, so because of bullet wounds, and because Stiles' imagination is canonically pretty gross, this chapter has some blood imagery.

It was not possible for Stiles Stilinski to sit _still_ , for hours, waiting for Scott to find the bullet, listening to Derek’s blood drip down and pool on the floor, probably sliding down the gear shift, gumming up Roscoe’s driving forever.  Probably it would catch on fire while he drove, or supernatural maggots would pour forth one morning on the way to school, stripping the flesh from his bones in minutes. Scott wouldn’t notice the gooey skeleton Stiles had become, he’d just climb in the car, talk about Allison, and suddenly look over and scream.  Drip. A tourniquet would--“Dude.  I’ve got some shooting string in the back,” he waved at his lacrosse bag as Derek’s face jerked towards him.  “Lemme tourniquet that before you bleed out _in my car_. Oh my god, it’s everywhere.”

“Shut up,” Derek's teeth flashed at him.  

“Are your eyes glowing _blue?_  Why are they blue?  Scott’s are yellow, is it because he’s got brown eyes, augh, that blood isn’t even _red,_ it’s like _dead tar blood_ \--”

“Stop _talking,”_ Derek let his head thud against the window.

“If you don’t want help I don’t know why you came to us for help,” Stiles threw his arms up.  “Come on, I’m tying that off. It’s everywhere. My dad’s the _Sheriff_ , remember, he’s gonna think I murdered Jackson.”  He threw himself between the seats to rummage, one foot sliding across the windshield, and Derek growled like a diesel engine as he dropped back in the driver’s seat.  “Look, they’re even brandname Hero Strings. That’s me. I’m the hero here, saving my _car_ from _werewolves_ , uncover--uh, I’m gonna look out the window at the trees, and you’re gonna uncover that.”

“Stop ordering me _around._ ”

Stiles closed his eyes tightly at the wet sound of leather coming unstuck from something horrible.  He took a deep breath, turned to look, and yelled at the wisps of purple smoke in incoherent refusal.  “Oh my god, why is it doing that?  Can’t you get it _out?”_

Derek snorted, breathing shakily.  “It’s wolfsbane.”

“As in _bane_ , as in _death_ , as in _wolf-killing_ , as in _made for the purpose of killing werewolves?”_

“Yes!  They are _hunters,_ this is why--”

“I have to tell him to grab more than one, what if this happens again--” Stiles scrabbled for his phone.  “He’s still not answering. They probably already stuffed him.  He's on their wall. Allison will have a new wolfskin coat tomorrow,” he flung his hands in the air again, and his phone bounced off the roof.  “Stick out your arm--”

“This is why you _need_ me,” Derek tried again, biting back an unknown but probably humiliating sound as Stiles yanked the cord tight around his upper arm.  “They will kill me, and they will kill Scott--”

“And you’ll just murder us with your teeth, and not a bullet, I get it.”

“They will murder a whole _family,”_ Derek said hoarsely.  

“I guess that’s better, huh, murder on a smaller scale,” Stiles rolled his eyes, but yelped satisfyingly as Derek let his eyes flash, his sneaker somehow connecting with Derek’s knee.

“You aren’t dead yet,” Derek let his eyes fall closed again, shivering.  “You still have eyeballs, I still have claws.”

“They have nice wolf enclosures at the zoo now,” Stiles muttered.  “Do not die in my jeep. Holy shit, are you dying in my jeep?”

“Forty-eight hours,” Derek muttered.  “Got shot maybe...midnight. Still...hours.  Twelve, twenty-four…”

“That would be thirty-one hours, if we’re going from this sudden wisdom where you’ll be fine until _exactly_ tomorrow midnight, then drop in a heap, which, where are we getting that idea, exactly?  Because it’s stupid, _Derek_.  Oh crap, talk, say something, I am not realizing I’ve been talking to your _corpse_ when my dad finds us here tomorrow--”

“Not dead,” Derek took a deep breath, letting himself slump further against the seat.  

“Talk about something, Wolferella, before that pumpkin comes due,” Stiles heart rate was pounding.  The jeep rocked as he tried to comfortably adjust to sitting sideways while being built like a cranefly, and his knee must have hit the horn, but all Derek really processed was an earsplitting pain, and then Stiles’ hand scrabbling at him in a frenzy.  “Get out of my lap, dude, Derek, sit _back_ , oh my _god_ , look, here, seat leans back, _go over there_ \--”

After another short pause, Derek settled back against the window, and Stiles apparently successfully avoided the Weapon of Mass Noise.  The _other_ WMN, Derek reflected muzzily, as Stiles’ heart shot up again, and he began rapidly prodding Derek’s knee.  

“Not dead,” Derek sighed, feeling his arm going numb against the string.  

“Tell me about the hunters,” Stiles’ voice was commanding again, and Derek snorted, letting it fade in to noise.  It was too exhausting to open his eyes.

 

When the car abruptly restarted, he grabbed for Stiles’ arm, teeth bared, but he must have been slower than even a human.  Stiles patted his shoulder. “So you _are_ alive.  I’m just gonna go through a drive-through and pretend I don’t have a dying werewolf in my jeep.”

“No,” Derek tried, which should have been enough, but the car was moving, and he had to drop back to the seat to keep from faceplanting again.  He normally would have been able to follow the turns--he’d only spent a few years out of town--but he had to concentrate on keeping his stomach and brain in the car, and then Stiles dropped a sweater or something on his face.  He growled.

Stiles nudged him mid-order.  “You wanna milkshake or something, dude?  Keep your strength up. Maybe they add protein.  Maybe they do rabbit flesh shakes.”

“We don’t,” said the girl through the intercom.

“No. Yes,” Derek tried to decide through layers of flannel.

“Large vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry shakes!” Stiles pulled forward again, and Derek took a steadying breath.  “Don’t mind my friend,” Stiles’ heartrate shot up again, and Derek prepared for spilled milkshake all over his lap. “He’s drunk, and not a werewolf.”

“Okay,” the girl sighed.

“Curly friiiies,” Stiles sang, and she sighed again, and at some point Derek felt himself turn into a buffet table, the warm bags comforting against his chest.  Stiles wheeled around, and the smell of the trees they’d been parked next to returned.

“Scott owes me,” Stiles sounded smug, grabbing for what smelled like burgers with bacon and many more fries than one poorly-constructed human required.  

Derek slowly adjusted the seat to hold him upright again, and closed his eyes to wait for the world to stop spinning.  Stiles stabbed him in the face with a straw.

“Whatcha want?  There’s a burger you can fight me for, I bet I’ll win.  Fries. Milkshaaaakes.”

Derek felt like he was shaking apart, or turning into a lake of sweat.  Was this what humans felt like when they got sick? His stomach growled.  “Yes.”

“Here,” the straw prodded him again, and he grabbed at it.  Chocolate.

“...strawberry,” he frowned at it, and after a long moment and some noises from Stiles, it was replaced with strawberry.  He let his head fall back against the seat, drinking, then took it as it smacked into his chest a few times.

“Ohhh, this is absolutely what I needed, come to daddy,” Stiles was saying when Derek finished the shake.  He had a curly fries hanging from his mouth as he bit into the burger. “Come on, talk and you can have a burger.  Hunters. Who are they? Why do they know about you? Do they dress like Van Helsing?”

Derek held his hand out for the burger, between bites answering Stiles’ questions about buying wolfsbane on Hunter eBay, and eventually commandeering the vanilla shake, as Stiles asked increasingly meandering questions, in an increasingly high voice.  He only really registered that the latest question had been about Kate when Stiles stopped talking, and Derek frowned over to see half-chewed curly fries rolling down Stiles’ shirt, as he gaped and waved another handful.  

“Run that by me again,” Stiles wheezed, pounding his chest.

“No,” Derek let himself drop back against the seat, feeling thin satisfaction from already having eaten all Stiles had procured to bait him with.  “Call Scott. Or I’ll die in your car, and the hunters will kill all of you.”

Stiles swore, flailing.  Derek let his eyes fall closed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been informed my attempt at 3rd person omniscient didn't really come off, so I tried to stick to one-viewpoint-per-scene after this, sorry!


	2. A sleepover with Derek Hale seems like a barrel of laughs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's anything you think I should be warning for, let me know in the comments! Bavzel, sorry it's late, we got hit with some kind of plague and words aren't working as well as usual, so this is barely edited from the first draft!
> 
> This scene sandwiches into season one, episode nine, Wolf's Bane, when Stiles realizes Derek is hiding out in his room and the Sheriff has wandered off.

Stiles spun the desk chair back to glare at Sudden Derek.  “No, just, I have to--why are you _here?_  I get you can’t just run your credit cards up in a motel right now, but you want _Scott’s_ help, not mine, you keep--”

“Shut up,” Derek hissed.  “You told the _sheriff_ I _murdered_ people, you--”

 _“Scott_ told him--”

Derek held his hands up meaningfully, and Stiles groaned, letting the chair spin back so he could drop his head on the desk.  “Anyway, you _do_ murder people, you’re always all ‘have fangs, will mutilate’--”

“And you’re still _alive_ , right, so--”

“So which is it, am I supposed to believe you _won’t_ kill me, and ignore all your posturing, or believe you _will_ kill me and turn you in, because it’s confusing, y’know--”

“Just _shut up_ , he’s still down there!”

Stiles spun back around to watch him thoughtfully.  “...when Scott stays over we pull out the sleeping bag, but do you like turn three times on the carpet, and tuck your nose under your tail, or--”

 _“Stiles,”_ Derek gritted out, as Sheriff Stilinski finally drove away.  

“So I’m just...better than Scott?  I get that, I do, I mean he’s my brother but sometimes I want to rip his _throat_ out!  Rawr!”

“Stiles!” Derek dropped into the other chair, as far away as he could get.

“Keep sayin’ my name,” Stiles waggled his eyebrows.  

“I don’t even _know_ your name,” Derek glowered, its impact undermined by the anime snowboarder over him on the wall.  

“Stiles is good,” Stiles stretched, grinning.  “ _Act-tu-al-ly_ it’s Alphabet Soup Stiles.  Alpha for short. Which makes me the alpha!  Ha!”

Derek groaned, rubbing his face.  “What does that even mean--”

“So!  As _alpha_ Stiles, I need more info from you, about the fire--oh my god keep your claws in!  You’re not _on_ fire!  Nobody is on fire!”

“What do you know about the fire,” Derek’s voice sounded clenched.

“Nothing!  Nada! I just know maybe who set it, and some of these people the al--I mean, the _other_ alpha went after were arrested for arson--”

“You’re not an alpha, Stiles.”

“Jus’ call me Alpha.”

 _“No_.  What are all those files,” Derek pointed, as usual inept in the art of asking a question.  

“I maaaaay have copied a lot of my dad’s case files,” Stiles bounced slightly in the chair.  “These are the bodies that have dropped so far--”

“That’s _Laura_ ,” Derek appeared next to him, with the sound of compressing bedsprings.

“Yeh-heh-hep,” Stiles pointed to the corner of the photo, at the small nervous face behind her.  “And that looks an awful lot like you. I found the doctor that treated her for the arrow wound. We may have broken into his house.”

“What,” Derek lifted the photo carefully, biting his lips together.  

“He has this huge stash of werewolf books and crap, you wouldn’t even believe it--I took so much I’ve been hiding it under the bed so my dad doesn’t think I’m becoming, like, a dark wizard,” he waggled his fingers.

“A what,”

“A necromancer, you know, skull decor, trained vultures--”

“What are--are you on _drugs?”_ Derek’s eyes widened at the pills spilling off the file he’d lifted.

“Why yes, _Derek_ , I am, as prescribed by my _doctor_ , taking _medication_ \--”

Momentary alarm assuaged, Derek batted his face with the file.  “You know why the alpha is killing people?”

“As if I wouldn’t have _newer tires_ if I was making bank from my mad sales of _crack cocaine_ ,” Stiles smacked the file away, but began laying them out in some sort of order.  After the end of his explanation, he was slowly spinning the chair, as Derek tried to piece together who would have murdered both his family’s killers and his sister Laura.  

“You are gonna owe me so much food money,” Stiles whipped his phone out.  

“Get Chinese,” Derek glanced up.  “Egg rolls. What are...who are these people?  Lydia Martin, Danny--”

“OH,” Stiles grabbed them, falling sideways against Derek’s chest in his scramble.  Derek grabbed his head with one hand and held him away. “You don’t need those, they’re just people that might think I’m hot, Lydia is perfect, and the only girl I--”

 _“Egg.  Rolls_.  Stiles.”

 _“Egg_ rolls,” Stiles mimicked, in a parrot voice, for whatever reason.  He busied himself somehow tripping over a takeout menu, and Derek busied himself reading Sheriff Stilinski’s sticky notes.  

“So what if this Alpha followed the Argents here,” Stiles tossed his phone on the bed.  “Allison just moved here, right?  Why?  Maybe they did something to piss it off. It’s here trying to make a pack, and that’s why it was loitering around, y’know, _trespassing on private property_ and bit Scott.  What happens if somebody gets bitten and they’re already a werewolf?”

“I don’t--I don’t know,” Derek didn’t realize he was emitting a low growl until the lacrosse ball Stiles threw connected with his shoulder, from a wary, across-the-room distance.

“Could _that_ have killed Laura?  I saw her, she didn’t have a _lot_ of wounds.”

“When you _dug up my sister,_ ” Derek growled again, and Stiles flailed.

“Yes!  When we dug up your sister!  The _corpse_  you buried with no investigation, in the yard of your suspiciously burned down house, _that sister_ , yeah!”

“I don’t _know!”_ Derek took a steadying breath, and sat back down.

“We should maybe find out,” Stiles clambered under the bed, legs kicking.  “Maybe my scary magic books will have something. They’re probably bound in flesh.  There’s probably all kinds of horrifying facts in there.”

“It’d explain why your room smells so much like virgin sacrifice,” Derek flapped his sister’s file closed, shutting his eyes.

“Uh--yeah, yes it would, that is why, that is why my room smells that way, yes,” Stiles shoved a pile of books out from under the bed and against Derek’s foot.  

“You’re such an idiot.”

“Hey.  Help me look through these, they might be in, y’know, werewolf-ese.”

“That’s not--”

“Pawprints and whiskers dipped in ink, with an essence of urine,” Stiles began piling books on the desk.  

“Werewolves actually invented the pen,” Derek frowned at the top layer.  

“Really?”

 _“No,_ idiot.  This looks like it’s in _Humanese._  Latin.  Put your stalking victim files somewhere else, they’re getting in the way.”

“What!  Eugh, I have to learn Latin, I know.  Oh--” he tipped sideways abruptly, catching Derek’s eye, but the whole dramatic tilt and scramble was just the Stiles equivalent of stepping closer to his phone.  “I’ll tell Scott to find out where Allison’s family moved from. Maybe there was a news story.”

After hours of research, it did not appear there was.  “It still doesn’t make sense why some revenge-obsessed alpha would kill _Laura,”_ Stiles hummed, narrowing his eyes at Derek.  “Can’t you--sniff _out_ others?  Other werewolves?”  He let cold noodles dangle from his mouth, yanking on something comfortable enough to sleep in that covered his entire body.  “Don’t look over here.” Derek snorted.

“A murderer might not really care,” Derek shuffled through the file on the video store clerk for what had to be the fourteenth time.

Stiles rummaged through his dresser.  “I can’t let my muscles see your muscles, they’ll feel terrible--”

Abruptly, Derek switched off the light.  “The sheriff's car is coming.”

 ***

Stiles woke out of a dead sleep to Derek slamming the window open with a clatter of blinds, pants half on.

“Whuh,” he slid out of bed onto his forearms, blearily aware of the smell of carpet.  “Nloud.”

“She’s here,” Derek whispered furiously, kicking the sleeping bag aside and patting the ground for his shirt.

“Whuh-who’s here?  Where is--”

“She’s _here_ , Stiles, I heard her say my name, she’s outside, she’ll--”

Stiles grabbed the sill and drug himself further toward the window, his whole body suspended in midair by his thigh across the bedside table, and raised the blinds.  “Nobody’s out there, man. I think you had a--”

“I heard _Kate’s voice_ ,” Derek jerked his pants the rest of the way on, scrambling into a backward t-shirt.  “She said my name, she was laughing--”

“Hush,” Stiles hissed, rubbing his face.  “My dad’s home. His car’s right there. Even if she _is_ out there, she won’t shoot up the _sheriff’s house_ in the middle of the night.  She’d be trying to lure you _out_.”

Derek took a deep breath, covering his face, and dropped hard into the squeaky desk chair.  

“ _Stiles?_ ” came the tired shout down the hall.  “Go to sleep!”

“Stop squeaking the _chair!_ ” Stiles mouthed at Derek.

“Your _floor_ squeaks!"  Derek whispered back furiously.  "He’s coming down the hall.” 

“Get in, get in here!”

 

The sheriff poked his head in to see his son piled unusually high with comforters.  “What is going on in here?”

“Awful dream,” Stiles hand flashed white in the darkness.  “Grenades in my inventions, spy in the lair, wasn’t Lydia, heartbreak.”

“...haven’t you had that dream before?”

“Yeah! It’s still terrible! G’night, Dad, sorry, very sorry, quiet now.”

“Your _window_ is open, Stiles,” his dad walked in and closed it, glancing around suspiciously.  “You wouldn’t need all those pillows and blankets--”

“Thanks-Dad-I-was-half-asleep-and-forgot-sleeping-now-bye-Dad,” Stiles shouted, wide-eyed.

As the long-suffering sheriff muttered out of the room, Stiles reached under the covers and prodded the warm bulk bare inches away.  “Did you really hear her?”

“She might drive around calling my name, I don’t know,” Derek’s voice was muffled.

“That’s...creepy,” Stiles squinted at the shape of a werewolf fitting himself carefully in about eight inches down the side of a twin bed.  “Uh.”

“He’s _listening_ , Stiles.”

“Oh,” he pulled the blanket more tightly around them, tucking it down around and over their heads.  “Welp.”

“I might have imagined it,” Derek’s breathing quickened.  “But if I _didn’t_ , she’s _out_ there, and--”

“No, no, that’s fine, you’re fine,” Stiles whispered back, starting to pat Derek’s shoulder as he would Scott, and thinking better of it.  “You’re, um, exceptionally fine, the finest.”

“Touch me and I will crush your hand into a pasty bag of flesh,” Derek rumbled, and Stiles gasped in offense.  

“I was--!  I didn’t!”

“Stiles!  Go to sleep!” his dad’s voice came, from just outside the door, Derek jerked so hard with surprise the whole bed creaked, and Stiles slapped the blankets away to sit up.  

“I’m _trying!_  Go to bed or tomorrow’s _tofu!_ ”

 _“Close your eyes_ ,” his dad shot back, his voice dwindling.

“He’s got a gun,” Derek said softly, over what sounded like something ripping.  “If it lodges in a bone, it doesn’t have to be wolfsbane, it’ll prevent me from shifting or healing--”

Stiles muffled a soft scream into his blankets, then pulled them back over into the impromptu blanket fort.  “And tonight I’m gonna tell you all about midi-chlorians.”

“What.”

“See, okay, when George Lucas talked to the director and script-writer for Return of the Jedi, he said the Force was like yoga, right, like anybody can do it, but you have to train and study and get good.”

“Star Wars?”  There was a growl in his voice, deep enough to be felt more than heard.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles tucked his hands under his arms to keep himself still, resisting the urge to frantically wiggle one foot.  “Yeah, see, like a martial art, like a zen master thing.”

“Are you _going somewhere_ with this, I can’t hear your--”

“SO later on,” Stiles whispered over him, “He--meaning George Lucas--decided actually everyone has different amounts of these little critters living in their cells--he calls them a race, but it sounds more like a--a virus, like antibodies, kind of thing--”

“ _Stiles--”_

“Which means the force is equally available to everyone, but like, some are more equal than others, if you know what I mean--”

“Are you trying to liken the bite to midi-chlorians.”

“No.  Yes, good thought, but no, this always works on Scott, are you falling asleep yet?”

The bed bounced as Derek turned.  “You’re...boring me.”

“I can keep going, there’re blood tests and relevant terminology--”

Derek drew a shaky breath.  “...fine.”

“Oh my god, you want to hear about Star Wars, you are the best werewolf ever, Scott is deposed--”

“I _want_ to go to _sleep_ \--”

“Yeah, okay, okay, on to the Jedi.”

Once he got to Anakin’s birth, Derek’s breathing had slowed to inaudibility.  

When Stiles’ alarm went off the next morning, he kicked out to do his usual frog-swim towards the noise, connected with something warm and immobile, and hit the floor like a bag of lacrosse gear.

“Eugh,” he groaned.  “I was dreaming about _Danny_.”

“Was that when you shoved your foot in my mouth,” Derek’s voice came from above, “Or was it when you sucked on my t-shirt sleeve until the drool soaked my back?”

Stile’s head popped up like a groundhog.  He looked cagey, but contemplative. “...could have been either, honestly.  Anyway. That text that lured Allison to the school before the alpha showed up?  Danny’s really...really good with computers. I might have a wonderful, awful idea.”

 ***

After they’d manipulated and seduced Stile’s labmate into breaking the law, and Derek’s throat-ripping intensity was focused squarely on Melissa McCall’s phone use, Danny packed up his half of the lab assignment.  He occasionally glanced at Stiles and “Miguel,” in the corner while Stiles whispered furiously. “Just _wait_ for me,” he hissed through gritted teeth.  “Wait ‘til after the game. We can ask her then.”

“No hablo ingles,” Derek whispered back, teeth glinting.

Stiles bared his teeth right back.  “No mate a la madre de Scott, _Miguel.”_  

Danny shook his head, waved at Derek, and tromped down the stairs, as Stiles’ mouth dropped open.  “You get a wave? He thinks you’re super hot. _That’s_ how he acts when someone is hot.  Gay guys don’t think I’m hot, Derek!”

“That’s _really_ not important now--”

“Oh, you remembered English?  Dios mío, it’s a miracle!”

“I am going to the hospital, _right now_.”

“Fine.  Great. I am coming to ask her _myself_ , so you don’t tear her throat out with your teeth.”

“Fine.”  Derek grabbed a bag from inside Stiles’ closet, and Stiles pointed, grinning.  

“Is that your _wolfsack_?”

“Shut _up_ , Stiles.  Just-- _no_.”

“Why, is that what you call your scrotum?  Like a werewolf-scrotum special terminology thing?  Is it--”

 _“Stiles_ ,” the growl vibrated Stiles’ internal organs, and he chose to change the subject.

“Noted.  Filed away.”  He locked the front door behind them.  “We should do a photoshoot, though. I’d take _my_ shirt off for Danny, but since I’m not _hot_ to gay guys, it’ll have to be you.  It’d come in handy, what if we need him again--”

Derek pushed him down the steps, but he recovered himself in time to faceplant against his jeep.

“Dude.  Watch the jeep.  It’d be for the greater good!  We could make a fundraising calendar for the animal clinic!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for inspiration go to the extremely creepy dream I keep having where I jerk awake at about 4:30 am thinking someone is whispering my name. 
> 
> Also thanks to beta-reader HOBBIT for attempting to repair my Spanish! It's supposed to basically say "You can't murder Scott's mother!" in indignant tones, given Derek's usual threat techniques. 
> 
> Scott and Stiles took Spanish ostensibly to have a class together, but actually to find out what Melissa McCall is muttering.


	3. Either Stiles held on to the edge of the pool, or Derek weighs as much as a house cat, which would actually make sense given Lydia can haul him around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I say the pool "gutter" I mean that usually-tiled bit where the water slops over to be filtered, meaning Stiles' arm and hand is still basically under water.
> 
> Sorry I'm so late, Bavzel! I lost a couple of writing days to a truly disgusting cold, and this chapter just seems bland to me no matter what I do to it?! ARGH

“So--this is the werewolf kryptonite--” Stiles groaned.  “--you swim like a _hammer_.”

“I can swim,” Derek tried to keep an eye on the creature, from his low inadjustable angle.  “Can you see it?”

“Humans float, though, you hit the bottom like a guided missile.  Do me a favour--” Stiles panted, “--eat more french fries. Pop tarts.  A truckload--of Twinkies.”

“Shut up, Stiles--”

“For me, Derek.  Grow a nice set of wolfy-water-wings--” Stiles splashed around, trying to see the bizarre lizard-creature infesting his highschool pool.  “--a spare tire, y’know, right--right now, we could really use that spare tire, and nope!   _Derek’s_ too much of a wild wolf man to bring one--” he used too much air on talking, and gasped, kicking wildly.  “I’mma--kick over toward the edge,” he panted. “I can’t hold you up forever, you--”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek shouted, feeling them start to sink, but after a few seconds Stiles had a hand in the pool gutter, and Derek’s mouth was steady above the waterline again.

“Eugh, you’re an _anvil_ ,” Stiles adjusted his grip, hand sliding under Derek’s t-shirt and up his chest.  “Augh,” he said, hesitantly.

“Do not drop me,” Derek snarled at him.

“No, no, sorry to be all up in your, y’know,” Stiles’ face reddened in mortification as he realized he’d squeezed a pectoral to make the point.

“Stop _wriggling_ ,” Derek looked as far in the distance as he could, which wasn’t very.

“Uh, if you missed the update, we’re in a _pool_ and I’m _swimming_ and you’re wet and _slippery_ ,” Stiles felt his face heat further.

“Can you see it.”

Stiles considered commenting on the vibration of growling making Derek’s torso that much harder to grip, and cleared his throat.  “Ah. No? Yes. Over there--okaaaay not pointing with my wolf-holdin’ hand. It’s just kinda pacing.”

“You have to keep me from drowning, so I can kill it,” Derek told him, very seriously, as though Stiles was likely to just drop him, and then watch him drown from a dead man’s float.

“That’s what I’m _doing_ ,” he growled right back in frustration.  “Great, now I’m picking up on your social cues.  Is that what happened? Erica used to be pretty nice, and now she’s dragging me around by the ears.  What is it, you buy ‘em a leather jacket and say ‘beat people up’?”

Derek didn’t answer.

“Is it some kind of toughness thing?  Take no shit? Erica did take a lot of shit.  Why even pick her?”

“I _needed_ people who needed _me_ ,” Derek snarled.  “Scott will realize he needs me eventually.”

“Not as long as you hate Allison, he won’t,” Stiles snorted.  “Why even stick around, seriously?  Just go back where you came from, and nobody will bother you.”

“This _is_ where I’m from,” Derek’s voice was becoming a roar, and Stiles’ eyes widened, “and Scott _needs_ me.”

After a short pause, Stiles took a deep breath.  “I could be out there with Lydia, y’know, she’s out there beautifully crying, she sounded like she might actually talk to me--”

“The one you have a _stalker file_ on?”

“I do not--look, it’s _benevolent_ stalking, okay.  This might be my _only chance_.”

“Get her while she’s weak and vulnerable?”

“Not--no!  Look, Lydia can handle herself, okay.  She’d murder me if I did anything she didn’t like.  She’s like some kind of personified math proof, beautiful and perfect and kinda, y’know, not warm.  Blooded. At all.” With his hand in the pool gutter, and feet braced against the wall, his words came easier.  “And she is _crying_ in her _car_ ,” Stiles tried to kick himself up the wall of the pool to yell at the lizard-creature, his hand slipping nearly to Derek’s neck.  

“Maybe because she keeps _murdering people_ ,” Derek growled in his ear, coughing on pool water.

“No.  No no no,” Stiles tried to push him away to address this obvious falsehood, and Derek’s head went under.  Once everyone was able to breathe again, Derek’s furious commentary notwithstanding, Stiles began explaining the five-year plan to seduce Lydia, the setbacks re: Jackson, Stiles’ lack of sexiness to generally anyone, and his plans to wow her with a birthday present, his current choices somewhere between an enormous TV and an actual diamond remake of the Heart of the Ocean from Titanic.  

“How are you affording this?  You _are_ actually a drug dealer, aren’t you,” Derek sounded vindicated.

“No!  Dude! I just want _my_ Allison!”

“What,” Derek sighed, trying to wiggle his fingers.  They were floating a bit as Stiles struggled to keep his grip in the water, but the brief hope died quickly.

“I’ve been running messages between them,” Stiles groaned.  “It’s all ‘You know I’d do anything for you, we’ll last through this and _eternity_ ,’ and ‘I wrote you this really awful haiku with my best SAT words’ and ‘My _chemistry test_ reminded me of you and I realized I was just writing your name over and over’ and ‘What’s your sign because the horoscope said Tauruses will have a beautiful day’ and you’re so beautiful’--”

“Eugh,” Derek let his head fall back.  “They’re _children_.”

“I...guess,” Stiles frowned.  “I mean, Scott might _die_ , fighting this thing, it might not last, but--” he readjusted his grip around Derek’s chest, and cleared his throat.  “He has someone to write terrible haikus _for_.”

“So if you attack ‘Lydia’ in a moment of weakness, she might agree to listen to your haikus,” Derek sounded like he was rethinking his position on drowning.

“Well I have to _try_ ,” Stiles snorted.  “Gay guys aren’t into me, and she’s the only girl I ever--” he yelped back off the wall, as the kanima leapt in and reached for his arm.  

Once they were somewhat steady towards the middle of the pool--Stiles having given up on manners and firmly grasped Derek’s belt, the knuckle of his thumb brushing against taut muscle--Stiles yelled wordlessly back at the thing, then addressed Derek’s head.  “We gotta come up with something here--you’re like trying to float--a marble statue--”

“If you drop me--”

“I didn’t list ‘drown you’ in the options--did I?” Stiles was panting again, forced to bear Derek’s full weight.  He began working toward the edge again. “Despite you _attacking_ my best friend--and taking the alpha powers.”

“It wouldn’t have worked.”

“It wouldn’t have--cured him?”

“There’s--it’s not a _disease_ , there’s not a _cure_.”

“So you _lied_ \--to my best friend--”

“It _was_ something I heard!”

“You let him--think it was true!”

“He wouldn’t have helped me!  The alpha was killing people!”

“You are so--bad at this.”

“At _lying_ to people?”

“Yeah, I--guess that’s--fine--you can’t move--at _all_ yet?”

“ _No_ , Stiles,” Derek tried not to breathe water.  

“I’m just saying--” Stiles grabbed the opposite gutter, eyeballing the creature as he caught his breath.  “--how the hell long is it gonna last?  Does it torture its food for hours?  Hunt elephants?  Live on a diet of six-hundred-pound truckers?  Why does its venom last so damn long?  It’d need like two minutes _max_ to catch up with something.  It didn’t last nearly as long on me--I was okay by the time the ambulance arrived.”

“What.”

“Maybe it has some kind of control over it, y’know?  Maybe it’s keeping you slave to its magic lizard-juices just by watching us.”

“You could move in...minutes?” Derek tried to wiggle his fingers again.

“I mean, I was alright when my dad arrived.  So I could...tell him lies, about my life, which is full of werewolves and murder now.  I think he noticed.”

“And it had already left?”

“It left right away!  You think I’m right, about the lizard-juices?”

“Eugh.”

“Also, why’s it ignoring Erica?  She’s _right there_ , way easier to get to than we are.  Anyway, it _should_ have worn off by now, so I could go _talk to Lydia_.”

“Could we talk about something other than being eaten, or my betas being eaten, or your pathetic love life,” Derek gritted out.

“Hey, go ahead.  What you got goin’ on, when you’re not being a _wolf_.  Rawr.  You must do things besides, like, kill rabbits and loom.”

“...shut up, Stiles.”

“I mean you did _something_ , right, it’s been six years, you didn’t just nest in leather jackets and pee a line around your car.”

“I’d _love_ to talk about the _dead sister_ you dug up, _Stiles_.”

“No, I get that,” Stiles cleared his throat.  “Uh, my--my mom died. But like, I started lacrosse!  I met Scott, y’know. Who you saved, from Kate Argent.  Which is why I’m hangin’ on so tight even though you’re an _asshole_ , dude, and it’d be _way_ easier to let your _lead ass_ sink--”

“Did you know the Beau Geste effect can be used to make two wolves sound like twenty,” Derek sighed.

“ _Werewolf trivia_ , oh my god, _yes_ , of course that’s a thing!  Hit me!”

“Two of the ways people believed you could become a werewolf were to drink from our footprints or sleep in the light of a full moon,” Derek’s mouth quirked.

“Well shit,” Stiles snorted.  “Good thing I didn’t tempt fate with your boot prints then.”

“Or go _camping_.”

“Ha!  Go on.”

“But--in Ancient Greece, if you ate a lamb a wolf had killed…”

“How does _that_ even work, like, was the lamb a werewolf first?  That’s awesome.”

“No, you became a _vampire._ ”

“What?!”

“Ravens have been called wolf-birds because they follow packs around to steal their kills.  And tease them.”

“Bite their tails, play chase,” Stiles’ eyes narrowed as the creature wandered by, but it was just circling the pool.

“You can get insured against becoming a werewolf.”

“ _What,_ ” Stiles almost lost his grip laughing.  “Like, online?”

“No, real insurance,” Derek snickered.  “Most insurance companies will cover it.”

“If only we’d known,” Stiles grinned back, waiting.

“...those are the good ones,” Derek’s voice went quiet.  “It’s mostly how to kill us, otherwise.”

“...so, were those the essays that got calls home?  Overly detailed werewolf myths?  Teachers going ‘Derek’s a good kid, but he’s writing some really disturbing stories about nails through hands,’?”

“...maybe,” Derek ducked his head.  “...wolf dung curing cataracts…”

“I wrote a history of male circumcision on my economics essay,” Stiles sighed long-sufferingly.

_“Why?”_

“Train of thought...off the rails, you know how it goes,” he shrugged.  Derek shook his head.

“I really don’t.”

“So your wolf shit factoid there was a totally natural progression.”

They watched the lizard man decide against dropping on them, hissing away, and Stiles took a deep breath.  His arms were shaking. Once it had circled to the other side of the pool, he began a slow switch that involved jamming his gutter-grabbing arm into the gutter at the elbow, grabbing a handful of Derek’s shirt with that side, and using his hitherto-wolf-supporting-hand to grab the gutter.  Derek shut his eyes, listening to Stiles narrate the switch. “Ha, now I can do this for a few more minutes,” he said triumphantly.

“...talk about Star Wars,” Derek said, after several beats of silence, and Stiles dropped him, diving instantly to yank him back up.  

“What?!  Dude! I didn’t know you even _saw_ them!”

“Everyone’s seen them, _do not drop me again_ ,” Derek frowned into Stiles eyes, unexpectedly facing him, with Stiles’ arm around his waist.  

“I didn’t know they had DVD players in the woods!”  Stiles’ breath smelled of his medication, and peanut butter cups.  Facing him, the humidity was less easy to ignore.

“Which is your favorite?” Stiles’ grin widened, holding Derek chest-to-chest.  He smelled like chlorinated laundry soap, stress, and oil from his jeep. It was infuriatingly familiar--the smell of inept bandages, idiotic cover stories, and moments of safety.

“I don’t care,” Derek snarled at him, snapping his teeth.

“Wow, okay,” he glanced to check the position of the lizard-thing.  “Empire Strikes Back is obviously superior, but I will accept other opinions--”

“Never mind,” Neither Derek’s fingers nor toes were cooperating yet, but he was rapidly rethinking reliving the night he was trying not to attack someone just to end the tension of always feeling hunted, and Stiles had talked him down with midi-chlorians.  

Stiles still smelled like terror, but he was starting to smell of (nerdy) anticipation, as well.  “Doesn’t matter if you don’t remember them all, I can summarize!”

“ _No_ ,” Derek’s protest was lost in the onslaught of _loud humming,_ as Stiles speedily performed the theme.  If it had been a recording, it would have been chipmunk-high.  The creature cocked its head at the mistreatment of John Williams.

“Long ago,” Stiles began, “In a Galaxy far, far away--”

It took a good while for Stiles to give a detailed narration, with voices--all sounding increasingly breathless--of The Phantom Menace, and then he paused abruptly.  “...so I’m thinking this isn’t gonna wear off,” he said finally.

“ _Stiles--_ ”

“I’m not saying, like, feed the kraken--,” Stiles rolled his eyes.  “But we have to call Scott--I can’t keep swimming forever--dude--even hanging off the sides--I’d be exhausted even if it was just _me--_ ”

His grip started to slip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many questions about this show, so you'll notice me addressing many of them here. If you watch the show and read this fic concurrently, it'll probably match up fairly well (how many people have written this exact fic, I wonder?) Obviously this is The Pool Scene in Abomination season 2 episode 4, around when Stiles comments that it's been two hours. From what I remember Derek is fine to stand up shortly after Scott shows up, too, which either means 1) I'm right, and the venom wears off when the kanima leaves or is distracted, or 2) Derek is a huge faking faker.
> 
> You really can get werewolf insurance.


	4. Argents Assemble!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season two, episode ten, they're paralyzed in the police station next to each other until the kanima juice wears off, and Allison decides to be a revenge monster. If you don't want to (re)watch the show and you're confused, I referenced these guides while writing: https://commasandampersandsblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/teen-wolf-recap-season-2-episode-10-fury/ and https://raketsuban.wordpress.com/fandom/teen-wolf/!
> 
> Sorry for the late update--I was revoltingly sick for a couple weeks. The last chapter went up while I was too snot-filled to understand humour or joy, so hopefully this one's a bit more fun!

“How did you get caught so fast?!” Stiles whispered fiercely, as soon as they were alone and prone on the floor of the police station.  “Aren’t you the big bad alpha, our only hope against the kanima? You are disappointing the shit out of Princess Leia right now.”

“I’m not--what?  I came looking for Scott!”

 _“And_ you tried to kill the best, smartest girl _in the world._  I thought you weren’t _murderers_.”

“Are we still talking about Princess Leia?” Derek asked, with the 10% of his brain not listening for happenings in the back of the station.

 _“Lydia_ ,” Stiles groaned. _“Derek_.  I know _you_ don’t believe in true love, but think about me!  I swam for _two hours_ for you.  I bought you _milkshakes._ ”

“You thought she was the kanima too,” Derek rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“I wouldn’t have killed her!”

“Just, what, kidnapped her and locked her in a police van?”

“I have a ten-year plan.  We’d have gotten through it!”  Stiles sighed, closing his eyes.  He sounded exhausted, and Derek briefly hoped he’d fall asleep, but the vacation from his voice lasted only a few seconds.  “You are _not_ allowed on the bed anymore.  No more eggrolls for you.”

“Shut up,” Derek tried, sighing, but naturally Stiles started _gibbering_ at the sound of a gunshot.  “Shut up, shut _up_ ,” Derek hissed, trying to listen.  “It’s Scott, he’s healing, it’s Scott--”

“Jesus Christ,” Stiles moaned.  “Jesus _Christ.”_

“Shut up, so I can hear,” Derek grimaced, as Matt and Scott started arguing in the hallway.  Jackson stared down at them, head cocked.

“He looks like he’s wondering why we’re on the floor,” Stiles gritted his teeth.

“They’re phoning the Argents,” Derek closed his eyes.

“You smell,” Stiles’ voice cracked, as he tried to distract himself, _“so_ much better than the carpet in here--”

“Stop _smelling_ me,”  Derek snarled, and Stiles tried to flinch back.  

“Neither of us can move, _genius_ ,” he muttered into Derek’s shoulder.  “Lil’ snuggle between bros, no harm done--”

“If you can squirm, why aren’t you _moving away_ ,” that same growl had felt like an engine under his chest, Stiles reflected, feeling an odd nostalgia for ten minutes before.

“You’re like one of those motel beds you put quarters in,” Stiles informed him, with the verbal filter of one trying not to imagine monsters eating his family a few rooms away.  “It’s nice, kinda relaxing, do you purr?  Holy god, you snarling beast, don’t bite my face off.  At least they moved me, I’m too young to die in the lap of an accused felon in my dad’s office.”

“You weren’t in my _lap_ ,” Derek got louder, and Stiles shushed him, as Jackson’s head cocked the other way.  

“Kinda was.”

“ _Enough--_ ”

“As stated,” Stiles tried to lift his head by letting it roll and jutting his jaw to the side, which didn’t work, although his mouth was, predictably, the only bit of him that stayed mobile.  He watched Derek’s teeth clench as he stared fixedly at the ceiling. “...dude.  What is the deal. You can _breathe_ , right, I mean, this isn’t my fantasy either, but it’s not like we’re not wearing pants.  Hey, do I stink?” Curiosity began suggesting options, given there wasn’t a lot else to do. “You smell kinda like dirt.  Have you been...digging?  Like in the dirt, with your claws?  That’s hilarious--I bet I smell like pant-shitting terror, that would figure, given the biggest asshole to live is a _lizard monster_ who has _my dad_ and _Scott’s mom_ \--” his words got faster, keeping pace with his heartbeat, as he stared back at Jackson.

"...Peter's back," Derek admitted.

"What?  Hwuh?!"

" _Lydia_ brought him back," he bared all his teeth in a smile at Stiles.  "She drugged me and--"

"You can be drugged?  By, y'know--people?"

"--used my blood to revive him--"

" _Why_ _?_  Why wouldn't she  _call_ me," Stiles groaned.  "Lydia, you perfect storm.  So like...did you kill him again, or..?"

"I came _here_ , to help  _Scott_ \--you don't even sound surprised."

"I'm staring at  _Jackson_ , her boyfriend, who's on the ceiling, and a lizard, _and_ watching me like a cat with a laser dot," Stiles' sentence was wavery, and he cleared his throat.  "Why hasn't he killed us?  I can't even think of a reason.  Also, man, we gotta stop burying people at your house.  It never goes well."

“...shut _up_ , Stiles,” came the rote response.  

“...you're like having manly air freshener, though.  This _would_ be super awkward if we weren’t in pants.  Teenager, here. Boner!” Stiles sang softly, as Derek managed to tilt his head enough to stare over.  “What? You’re--you’re human _-shaped_ , my dick doesn’t care about the fangs and the…”

Derek didn’t want to know.  “Talk about _anything_ else.”

“Oh shit, yeah, you can tell, can’t you, you can smell _arousal_ , you _know_ and _that’s_ why you haven’t shoved me into more walls, you musta got a snootfull of Stiles’ _teen ardor_ \--”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek let his growl rumble a bit towards a roar.

“No, you’re right, I'm gross, everything's gross, there’s so much gum on the floor, it’s my dad’s _work_ , which you know, because you can probably hear him in there, being told I’m a hostage--and there’s probably, like _viscera_ on the ground now--oh my god, can you hear my dad?  Derek, what’s going on, you have to tell me what’s going on--”

“I can’t hear anything--”

Stiles’ breathing ratcheted up. _“Nothing?!_ They’re--”

“They’re the same!  They’re the same!  They’re not dead, he’s not hurting them, your father’s trying to get the handcuffs off--”

Stiles’ gasps were not slowing.

“Laura,” Derek began, but didn’t attempt an ending.

“What,” Stiles wheezed, shutting his eyes tight.

“My sister.  Laura. When we were little,” Derek said quickly, taking a deep breath, “she’d watch scary movies.  Like once they all watched An American Werewolf in London--”

“Why are you--of course they did.  Oh my god.  Wait, where were you,” Stiles choked out.  “Were you--were you hiding in your room?”

“...I...was not watching it.”  He swallowed past a sudden roughness, trying not to compare the house he lived in currently with hearing the snickers from below at werewolf movies, and the relaxed heartbeats when he walked into the house.  “I--I was upstairs.”

Stiles snorted with laughter, though his veins still stood out from lack of oxygen.  He had tears running down his cheeks. “You--you realize,” he took a deeper breath, mouth twitching, “I can’t help--picturing baby were _wolves_.  With little ears and tails. You know that, right,”  His voice was shaky, but he watched for Derek’s next words with a determined frown, ignoring Jackson’s slow tail lash.

“She’d growl back at it when it got scary--”

“Oh my god--”

“--just roar at the screen--”

“This is amazing--”

“--and then when she’d been thrown out of the front room for being too loud, she’d go and be _really loud_ clattering and beeping with the microwave, because she wasn’t allowed to bite Peter--”

“My new favourite werewolf, you've been replaced.”

“--and she’d kick my door until I woke up and tell me she brought me hot chocolate so _I_ wouldn’t be afraid.”

“Because you were what, like three?”

“She was seven, I was five,” Derek listened to Stiles’ heart rate, thinking he would have to listen to a gerbil sometime, and compare.  Their similarity might actually come in handy--they could build Stiles a wheel, to run on when he wouldn’t shut up about pants.

“Hot chocolate delivery doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It was pretty good--about half marshmallows.”

Stiles huffed a laugh, still listening for anything in the back of the station, and Derek cleared his throat, unwilling for the conversation to boomerang back to Stiles’ dick.  Again. “She got under the covers and told me all about the foggy moor, and the creepy pub, but in her version she was a werewolf FBI agent working with Dana Scully, and they stopped the attack--” he stopped abruptly, closing his burning eyes tight against the memory of years of monologues about Dana Scully.

“...big X-Files fan, was she?”

Derek swallowed hard, biting his lips together.  He could hear Stiles’ heart rate raising again next to him.

“...sounds like you need some of that hot chocolate right now, dude,” Stiles cleared his throat.  “We survive this and I’ll get you milkshakes again. Jackson, you aren’t invited.”

Derek took a shaky breath.  

“I mean it, buddy, you can even have bed privileges back, just no muddy paws, you can just climb right on in--”

The laugh sounded more like a choke, but it got Derek’s lungs moving again.  “Are you even any _good_ at bedtime stories?”

Stiles’ heart thudded, for some reason.  “Are you asking if I can _talk_ right now?  Because _yes_ , _Derek_ , I can give a wolf some sweet, sweet hot chocolate and bore him to sleep under the covers.”

Derek’s shoulders started shaking with suppressed laughter.

“I’m not--I didn’t mean _that_ ,” Stiles wheezed.  “What?! Whatever you’re implying is _not_ what is happening--”  

“She…” he cleared his throat.  “She’d retell me all the horror movies, but with her in it, so every scary scene ended with her jumping off a roof and into a fight and eating everyone--”

“What, _every_ scene?”

 _“Babe_ was a much shorter movie.”

Stiles cackled.

“101 Dalmatians was a _slaughter_.”

“Oh no,” Stiles gasped.

“After the,” Derek took a steadying breath, “After, we--we picked the Camaro, out of the family cars--it’s--it’s two-door, we didn’t need some big pack minivan--”

Stiles watched his eyes go wet again, and his eyes narrowed.  “Wait. You’ve been packing _four werewolves_ in your _two-door Camaro?_ Where do you _put_ them?  Who’d you stuff in the back to get to Lydia’s?  And the ice rink? Oh no, it’s like a clown car--did Boyd and Isaac have to stick their legs out the window--”

“I’m getting a pack car,” Derek said crisply, trying not to think about Boyd and Erica in the woods, or Peter.

“Shit, yeah, you're gonna have to fit Peter in there, too, alive or dead or whatever.  Do the back windows in that thing even open, or do they have to put their knees over your shoulders?”

“...Isaac decided to just run over.  We parked and waited for him.”

“Ha!  Yeah, how would you do the Tombstone Walk properly if he’s gonna run up in the middle all ‘Hey guys, sorry I’m late, are you murderin’ without me’.  So…” he glanced over, cataloging the tension in Derek’s jaw and shoulders. “Uh...anything changed, back there?”

Derek listened.  “...Scott’s mom’s pretty upset.”

Stiles drew a long breath.  “...why New York?”

“...oh.  She...Laura was at Yale.  She flew back and said I better come with her and join the Yankees.”

“What?!”  Jackson had started a slow circuit of the room, apparently allowing Stiles to feel free to ratchet up the volume again.

“...when I was younger, I always wanted to play baseball.”  

Stiles’ investigatory stare narrowed at what appeared to be reddening cheeks.  He suppressed a grin. “...well, you could, couldn’t you?”

“No.  Not--I’d slip up, probably.  On TV. And even if I didn’t, the cameras wouldn’t work.”

“Oh,” Stiles deflated slightly, relinquishing his seconds-long dream of Stilinski, werewolf pinch hitter for the Mets.  “I forgot about that.”

“Yeah.”  

“So...what’d you do, then?”

“Oh.”  Derek’s cheeks were definitely red now.

Stiles sensed weakness.  “Something hilarious?”

“I was going to be a fireman,” Derek cleared his throat.  “It’s a normal job, we’re fast and strong, and we heal quickly, but…”

“That’s not hilarious at all, given the givens,” Stiles frowned.

“No, I...I got contacted by a talent scout,” Derek cleared his throat.

“Oh, this is better, talent at what, _Derek_.”

“I...I was in magazines,” Derek said quickly, wishing for an interruption, like an earthquake, or a teenage serial killer with a pet lizard monster.

“...what were you doing in the magazines?” Stiles’ grin threatened to take over his face.

“I was...not wearing...they sold men’s briefs,” Derek tried to fall back on a businesslike tone, unaffected by Stiles’ yelp of laughter.

“You were talented at _wearing underwear_ , Derek, that’s a _low bar_ , what did your resume say--” Stiles couldn’t contain his cackles anymore.  “‘Good at forgetting pants’?  Always remembers to tuck in’?”

“Sssh!”  Derek snorted, as Jackson leapt up on the desk, staring outside.  

“ _Danny, your soul is now ours,_ ” Stiles whispered, in throatily dramatic tones.  “Though he’d probably be even more pliant if you put on that fireman’s helmet.”

“What?  No!”

“You don’t even need the rest of the uniform!  And we could do baseball, I have a bat you could hold in front of your junk.”

Derek blinked, frowning at the ceiling.  “I can’t kill you until we can move again, but--”

“That’s a few months out of the pinup calendar there.  We could do one on your tiny car.”

“... _no_.”

“Donate proceeds to the adoption center at the vet!  C’mon, dude, take it off for the puppies, they’re practically family.”

They both listened for a long second.  “...everyone’s fine,” Derek muttered.

“Why has no one noticed this yet, aren’t there squad cars out there radioing in to silence?”

“...yeah,” Derek closed his eyes.  “Maybe the Argents will show up first.”

The room darkened abruptly as Jackson loomed in the doorway.

Stiles hummed an ominous clip from Star Wars, then cleared his throat.  “...so. Was that whole story earlier because you want hot chocolate?”

“...it was just a thing she’d do.  In our apartment, we both...had trouble sleeping, sometimes, and she’d make tea--”

“You got _downgraded_ to _tea?_ ”

Derek snorted.  “--she’d come kick my door until I got up, hand me a hot drink, and jump on my bed--”

 _“Sometimes_ it was something good?  With marshmallows?”

“--and she’d make a pillow fort--”

“A _den_ ,” Stiles whispered.

“...or we’d go for a drive, and she’d tell me stupid stories again, like Wolfilocks and the Three Little Wolves--”

“What!”

“--or Wolferella--”

“You can’t leave it there, you have to tell me every one of these--” they both fell silent as a car pulled up, turned around, and left.  “...shit.”

“The Little Wolf Girl had to sell matches before she could return home,” Derek began woodenly.  “She stood out in the snow freezing her ass off, but nobody wanted to buy matches, so she threatened to tear their throats out--”

“--with her teeth,” Stiles said in unison, snickering.  

“Then, people gave her all their money, and she went home.”

Stiles was giggling, a little hysterically.

“Hanswolf and Wolfel--”

“Seriously?”

“They ate the witches cottage, and the witch.”

“That one’s very short.”

“They were pretty, uh, to-the-point,” Derek snorted.  “Depending on the kind of day she’d had. She’d get home from work and storm into my room.”

There was an abrupt squeal of tires outside, and Jackson scuttled out of the room.

“Oh no,” Stiles breathed.  “Can you move yet?”

“No.  It’s the Argents,” Derek’s jaw clenched.  “Gerard’s here.”

“Jesus,” Stiles’ voice rasped.  “...So, like, you’re buying a pack van, then.”

Derek snorted.  

“You could paint Wolfrider Dana Scully on the side.”

Derek choked, glaring over.  “Even if I’d want to _look_ at that or could get someone to _paint_ it, you really want your father to have to pull over the _lesbian bestiality van_ all the time?!”

“No!  Wow! Your sister _really liked Scully_ , wow.  Alrighty then.  Damn. Yeah, kinda, I kinda do.”

 _“Stiles_ ,” Derek growled, just before everything went to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knooooow modeling is a real job and I love basically nothing more than tea. I can't see Stiles being a curly fries and oolong kinda guy, though? And he can't resist giving Derek a hard time, like, ever. Also, now we know the reason Derek showed up with a new car next season! =D
> 
> THANK YOU to BuchananGalaxyCarter, who reminded me I had mentioned Derek's dirt smell without explanation! I fixed it!


	5. Those Alphas left a pretty big mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm free again! The last chapter had a lot of show-context, what with them being paralyzed, and the kanima and Matt wandering the place, but this bit picks up in Derek's loft after Boyd's death, as Cora mourns him, and Stiles' squeezes Derek's shoulder. Lydia and Ms. Blake are in the doorway being dry, Isaac is around, Peter has crept off somewhere. (He'll be back next episode to tell Stiles all about how he used to spy on Derek's love life, like a loser.) After this point, the show doesn't really pick up with anyone for a few days, so I had a lot of leeway. SO NICE
> 
> If you want more details, here's an episode summary: https://commasandampersandsblog.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/teen-wolf-recap-season-3-episode-7-currents/
> 
> In my opinion, Derek has a cell phone--otherwise, how was he talking to Stiles from the car in season one, when Stiles went in to check on Peter and got attacked?
> 
> I don't describe anything (like bleeding or bodies) in detail, but both are present.

“Okay,” Stiles muttered, sloshing around in the calf-deep water.  “Okay...”

Lydia clapped her hands.  “Alright. Derek. Do you have neighbours?”

He lifted his head, but didn’t look away from Boyd’s body.  Stiles squeezed his shoulder harder.  “Isaac.  Neighbours?”

“What?” Isaac approached Cora and Boyd, hands cautiously in the air.

 _“Neighbours_ ,” Lydia snapped.  “Are there people wondering what happened, and _calling the police_.”

“Oh!”  Isaac blinked over.  “No! No.”

“They just _left_ ,” Ms. Blake rasped from the door, staring after the alpha pack.  

“Stiles, take her home, she’s in shock.” Lydia’s eyes narrowed at her teacher’s flinch.  “We need to...clean up.”

“Don’t bury him at Derek’s house, that never goes well,” Stiles snorted, then grimaced at Derek’s pained noise.

“We can plan a funeral for later,” Lydia tucked her hair behind her ears, smoothing her skirt.  “But for now, we need to…”

After a long second, Stiles looked up to see her eyes widened meaningfully at him, and he glanced down at Derek.  She nodded slowly, and he was momentarily distracted by her fabulous everything. “...you’re so--” he found himself saying, and she rolled her eyes, which snapped him out of it.  “Uh, come on, Derek. We...we gotta get Ms. Blake home.”

Derek’s shoulders were trembling.  

“...come on, big guy.  Do you have a sink?”

“Upstairs,” Isaac put in helpfully, which was annoying, mostly because it was Isaac, but Derek allowed himself to be yanked upright.  The spiral staircase was exciting, hauling a six-foot werewolf who’d apparently gotten confused about things like feet.

“Come on, wash up,” he staggered as Stiles shoved him at the sink, but when Stiles got there, Derek was just staring at his blood-covered fingers.  “Jesus,” Stiles sighed, patting around for soap. “Come on, get your hands in the water, Lady Macbeth.” He busied himself with the bar of soap, slapping clouds of white suds on Derek’s hands and rinsing them clean before he could stare at the blood anymore.  His arms were oddly cold, having been in close quarters with werewolves before, and Stiles leaned close, trying to gauge the symptoms he’d learned slinking around the Youth Cadet Law Enforcement programs. “Take some deep breaths.”

Derek’s attempt was jerky.  

“...your pulse seems okay, ish, I mean, you’re alive.”

“I’m fine,” Derek said, his voice cracking.  “Ev--everyone should leave.”

“Yeah, no,” he frowned at the blood on his hand from Derek’s neck, and Derek cranked the water all the way on and stuck his head in the sink.

Looking around in the dim light, there was a good-sized bed against the windows, and the tiny bathroom.  It seemed barely a cut above camping, given the lack of furnishings in general, but it was definitely better than the abandoned subway cars.  He kicked around until he found a suitcase. “...dude, you need a dresser.”

Derek made some noise from under the faucet, but didn’t lift his head.  Stiles rummaged around until he had sweatpants, a t-shirt, and dry socks, frowning under the bed for a den of dry shoes.  

“...what are you looking for,” Derek asked in a raspy voice, holding on to the edge of the sink with both hands.  

“Shoes.  You’re soaked, buddy.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, okay, come on.”  He grabbed an additional pair of dry socks, and felt around in the darkness by the sink for a towel.  “You can walk down stairs on your own.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Derek’s shoulders hunched.

“Yeah, actually, you are.  Come on, help me get Ms. Blake home.  What’s she doing here?”

“...she...helped me.  They used her as a--hostage.”

“How did she even...y’know what, just come on.  Down the stairs. Down, boy.”

Derek just _went_ , without so much as a “Shut up, Stiles,” and Stiles followed, prodding him toward the door, and past Boyd’s body, where he stumbled.  Luckily, in the dim loft, it was harder to tell how darkly Boyd’s blood--and whatever else--had saturated the water.

“I’ll text you,” Lydia waved them away.  “We’ll...fix the leak.”

“Thank you _so much_ , Lydia,” Stiles nodded, deflating slightly as they reached the doorway to the loft, and Ms. Blake stood unsteadily to meet them.  Her dry heels sounded oddly normal next to the waterlogged squish of he and Derek’s pants and shoes.

“I’ll--no need to take me all the way home,” she said quickly.  “I’ll--I’ll give you directions to a friend’s. I don’t want to...go home alone.”

Stiles piloted Derek towards the stairs by one elbow, holding a hand out to her, but she shook her head.  When they got outside, Derek automatically headed towards his new four-door FJ Cruiser, but Stiles cringed away from memories of a “pack car” conversation, and steered him to the jeep--before halting them both so abruptly Derek turned to frown at him.

“What are you _doing_.”

“You’re covered in the blood of like six werewolves, dude, you are not putting that stank ass in Roscoe’s innocent pillowy depths.  I had enough fun scrubbing you off the gearshift _last_ time.”

“Stiles--” he closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and shaky.  

“Stiles,” Stiles mimicked, beginning to feel shocky himself.  He grabbed Derek’s disgusting bloody shirt and yanked up to his armpits.  “Take it off.”

“I--” Derek’s eyes came a little more awake.  “I don’t--”

“Look, the whole town’s seen what there is to see, _Derek_ , just stand between the door and my jeep and _change_.”  Derek nodded, fumbling with his blood-soaked belt and jeans.

Stiles groaned, stalking off to get a sweatshirt and garbage bag from the back.  His jeans clung to his legs, his shoes wheezing wetly underneath them, and he rolled his eyes as he yanked at his fly.  As soon as Ms. Blake saw her student undoing his pants, she yelped and turned to stare up at the sky. Stiles rifled through his gym bag, pulling on clean track pants, socks, and running shoes--then frowned down at the bloody smears from hauling Derek around, and pulled on a clean shirt.   He returned in time to yank the dry t-shirt down where it was trying to cling to Derek’s wet abs, wrap the wolf in the sweatshirt, and shove his now-dry ass on to the seat, kicking the gross bloody things aside. “Socks,” he snapped in front of Derek’s blank stare, before Ms. Blake, looking bewildered, said “I--I think he’s sitting on them.”

Stiles growled, stuffing the bloody clothes into the trash bag, then suddenly realized since Derek had caught him ransacking the place before he’d answered the age-old boxers or briefs question, he’d doomed the man into going commando.  “Sorry you’re freeballin’, dude, I didn’t think.”

Derek shrugged.  “I don’t care.” His feet were still hanging outside the car, white and wrinkled from the water, and Stiles shoved his legs up and aside to rummage the seat under Derek’s ass for the socks he’d grabbed.  Derek and Ms. Blake were equally wide-eyed.

“What?!” Stiles flapped one to unball it.  “Here.” He yanked one pair on, shoved Derek’s legs all the way inside, and slammed the door.  Ms. Blake just blinked at him when he stalked around to open the back for her. She was breathing fine, he noticed, wondering in passing if she’d have some sort of breakdown later.  “Sorry for the lack of seats, but you’re getting out sooner. I’m gonna go find a dumpster,” he hefted the bag of death clothes and stalked away down the alley, bidding a sad mental goodbye to his plaid flannel.

She nodded, climbing in behind his seat, and reached up to touch Derek’s cheek.  “Thank you for...keeping my personal life private from him.” She cleared her throat.  “It can be awkward, when students know about your dating life!” The silence after her nervous laugh seemed even more tense.  

“...are you alright,” he said finally.

“I’m fine,” she swallowed.  “I--I’m fine, Derek, what about you?  I can’t--why did they bring _me_ there?”  

Derek had been quiet for a long few minutes when Stiles climbed back in.  “Okay, where to, Teach,” he glanced back at his literature teacher, who cleared her throat nervously.  

She gave him the address of a cafe, explaining she intended to wait for her friend, and Stiles started driving.  “Ah,” she spoke again, “Sooo...how...did you two meet?”

Derek curled more into the sweatshirt, shivering, and Stiles took his hand off the gearshift to squeeze his shoulder again.  “We’re the Scooby Squad. He’s Scooby, probably. My most favourite werewolf Scooby.”

Derek snorted.

“You have...a very large first aid kit back here,” she pointed out, smiling.  “Food, water, there’s--uh, there’s a baseball bat--”

“Derek, she found our Scooby snacks,” Stiles said flatly.

“Are you often...in danger?  Do your parents know about this?” she smiled sympathetically, and Stiles hit the brakes just a little harder than necessary coming up to the light.  

“I enjoy camping, ma’am,” he swerved into the parking lot, climbing out and holding the door like a chauffeur.  

“I have to worry about my students, you know,” she clasped her hands together.

“...I’m really hungry, bye,” Stiles slid around her and back into the jeep, nearly closing the door on her hands.  She waved as they left. “...isn’t she supposed to be your friend? Why wasn’t she more worried about _you?”_

“She was there _because_ of me,” Derek growled.  “Knowing me.”

Stiles glanced over at him--he’d apparently taken her exit as cue to recline the seat and curl up on his side.  “...when will villains learn they don’t need to threaten someone you know. Heroes will save anybody.”

“Heroes,” Derek repeated hoarsely.

“...you’re gonna stretch my…” Stiles began, watching the way the sleeves were straining over Derek’s broader shoulders.  “...whatever, if it falls off me, it’s your sweatshirt now.” Unsurprisingly, Derek didn’t respond. Stiles felt a momentary temptation to park, walk around, and see what the segment of Derek’s head uncovered by hood was doing, but finally just kept one eye and one hand on the road while he flailed around in the back for his plaid emergency blanket.  He chucked it at Derek’s head and pulled into the drivethrough.

In his peripheral vision, Derek flailed under the blanket in an effort to not suffocate, and Stiles steepled his fingers at the menu.  It bleeped, blasting voices. “--that button. That’s volume--” said a familiar voice.

“Can I take your order?” asked a flustered, deeper one.

“Hey!  I need some curly fries--”

“Oh,” said the familiar voice.

“--what?” asked both Stiles and the new voice.

“This customer,” she sighed.  “Last time he came through he wanted rodents ground up in his milkshake, left blood smears all over his money, and I think he had a corpse in the car.”

Stiles, unusually, was silent, mouth gaping indignantly.

“...should...should I call the police?!”

“It wasn’t a corpse!  He’s my buddy Derek, my favourite man, he lets me tell him about Star Wars,” he nudged the bulk in his passenger seat.  “Say something so the nice people stop freaking out, _Derek_.”

“I think he’s a cultist,” said the calm voice, and Stiles sputtered, fighting the urge to laugh.  

“Derek.  Seriously.  They’ll call my dad--”

“One order of curly fries?” the calm voice asked, causing a brief general silence.

“Uh--no!  No! Lots of fries!  So many! At least four orders!  And milkshakes, chocolate and strawberry, and a root beer, uh--” he detailed his desired meal, and everything he intended to pour into Derek, distracted by burger topping choices until he pulled up to the window, where they both stood well back.  

“Ah, he really is alive, though.  He was hurt last time, that’s why there was blood, we come here on crappy days.”

“It’s Beacon Hills,” she replied levelly, handing over the bags.  “Service with a smile and a shotgun.”

“Uh,” he piled Derek with food, feeling around for his arm, and held it up.  “Give me a thumbs-up, big guy--”

Derek did, after a soft snort.

The calm one crossed her arms.  “...he’s just...staying under the blanket.”

“He’s had one of those days, y’know,” Stiles beamed at her.

“My dog does that,” the other one offered.  “When she’s hiding, if she did something bad.  So that I can’t find her.”

Derek’s thumb-up turned into a less polite gesture.

Stiles bit his lips, unable to breathe enough to reply to that, waved, and pulled out into traffic, only to pull over moments later to wheeze and cackle on the side of the road.  “Oh no,” he gasped. “I can’t help picturing your sad dog ears now.”

Derek didn’t respond, so Stiles elbowed him, loudly chewing fries.  

“Come on, I got you a huge strawberry shake.”  After a short while of silence from the blanketed lump, Stiles realized he had no idea where he was driving.  Back to Derek’s was out. His dad might be home already.  Obviously not the school, or normal places like the bowling alley.  Scott or Allison’s house were out of the question, though he briefly considered Deaton’s.  After some thought, he echoed Derek’s sigh, and turned on to a well-traveled dirt road on the edge of town.  He backed in between the six other cars overlooking the city, and sat there, chomping fries, as Derek twitched and finally lifted his head.

 _“Stiles_.”

“Yep yepper.”

“We’re at _Makeout Point_.  What are you-- _why.”_

“Well,” he nodded over.  “Derek. Where do you suggest I take the older dude I hang out with?  Should we go leather shopping?”

Derek’s face emerged, red-eyed.  “What are you even--we aren’t--I’m not going _sex shopping--_ ”

Stiles choked, spitting some of his milkshake.  “I’m the only teenager you’ve disappeared with that hasn’t returned with a black leather _jacket,_ Derek, I’m not suggesting a dog collar.”  He rolled his eyes, trying to wipe chocolate shake off his shirt.  “Which you obviously _need_ , by the way.”

Derek dropped his face in his arms, his voice emerging muffled.  “...they’re sturdy. That’s why bikers wear them. Erica--”

To Stiles’ horror, Derek’s eyes went even more wet and shiny, so he bulldozed into the sentence.  “So by that logic, you’ll be getting Isaac rollerblading pads for Christmas. I bet Scott would help you pick out a helmet.  I can get the mouthguard. I’ll write something on it…” he considered. “What would I like Isaac to have to eat? I could just write ‘essence of turd’--”

“Shut up, Stiles,” he sounded exhausted.

“Get up a bit, dude, your burgers are getting cold.  I couldn’t get the Werewolf Special without a rabbit, or a deer, or like an Argent corpse, but hey!  Since I didn’t order that, they won’t call the police next time I drive through--”

“...there are so many people having sex here,” Derek groaned.

“Kinda what teenagers do when they get alone time,” Stiles shrugged, making a long slurping noise with his straw, before his heart thumped disconcertingly.  “Dude, no, narrate, this will be hilarious.”

“No.  And it won’t.”

“Come on, I’ll even put something on to drown them out.  Give me something.” The cackle in his voice was barely suppressed.  “I bet they’ve got their own music on.”

“Black-Eyed Peas,” Derek groaned, pulling the blanket up around his ears.  “One Direction, and that Titanic song--”

 _“Yes_ ,” Stiles cracked up, throwing a fist in the air, which hit the roof.  He curled around it, muttering incomprehensibly. “...you gotta keep me posted, man.  Are they like...on rhythm?”

The jeep filled with Alpha growl, and Stiles snickered, reaching over to rummage through the glove compartment.  “I’ve got...Slow Kids At Play, and oh, hey.” From past experience, Derek suspected he was waggling his eyebrows. _“You_ wanted to be a ball player.  Get up and watch the _best game ever,”_ he scrabbled around to plug in his longest phone charger.

“What,” Derek sighed.

“Good man,” Stiles brought up his Youtube queue.  “1986 World Series. Game six, versus the Red Sox.”

Derek was slowly inching upright, rubbing his face.  Stiles nudged his arm with a handful of napkins.

“...we’re facing the woods?” he frowned around.  

“We are crawling in the back.  There’s another blanket. And, like, probably some old towels.  We just won’t sniff those.”

Derek didn’t have that luxury, but they didn’t smell bad--just like the general inside of the jeep--a little like motor oil, and peanut butter cups, and the lacrosse field grass treatment, and Stiles.  “...could be worse.”

“Come on,” Stiles opened the door, folded the seat down, and scrambled in the back, shoving the other blanket, towels, and gym bag into something of a nest.  He reached over to unload the food he’d sat on Derek, prodding his shoulder insistently. “Just crawl back here, you don’t even have to step outside.”

“Yeah,” Derek shoved the blanket at Stiles, before crawling over the reclined seat, and Stiles stuffed it back over him before contorting himself, flailing, to raise the seat back to upright.  

“Couldn’t get Scott drunk either,” Stiles sighed, reseating himself and handing Derek his shake.  “Are there, like, Hunter greenhouses somewhere? Wolfsbane does everything else, maybe it can get you guys drunk.”

“Yeah, we should ask.  ‘Hey, Argents, could you give me some wolfsbane to ingest?’”

“Right?!  I bet Allison would be into getting Scott drunk.”

“ _No_ , idiot.”

“Fine,” Stiles unwrapped his double bacon burger.  “Shoulda taken you to Miguel Jr.’s.  Since it’s your namesake.”

“You named me after fast food.”

“There was a wrapper around.  It was that or a stream of consciousness list of the names of every Mets catcher since 1962.”

“...smooth,” Derek’s mouth twitched, and Stiles grinned, leaning to bump shoulders.  

“I wonder if Chinese delivers to Makeout Point?” Stiles muttered idly, chanting along with the game voiceover.  “And _Ford_ , have you driven a Ford lately?  I kinda wanna be a sports announcer.”  He held the phone up between them, leaning so they were shoulder to shoulder.  

Two hours in, Stiles started getting texts, and he paused it with a snarl.  “...Lydia says it might take a couple days for everything to dry out,” he clicked around.  “Annnnd Dad’s getting all kinds of calls thinking I’m naked out here, no, _Dad_ , I’m not sexing anyone in _Roscoe_ , jesus.  He think Lydia Martin’s gonna crawl back here?” he rolled his eyes, speaking more slowly as he typed.  “Just...hanging-out-with-a...friend. I should tell him I’m fucking Scott. I told him I was gay outside Jungle, and he said I didn’t _dress_ like I was gay,” he snorted.  “He’s the one who’s all ‘two is coincidence, three’s a pattern,’--”

Derek blinked at him.  

“I mean _anyone_ would bang Danny, amirite, that doesn’t mean anything, but _you’re_ really hot if, y’know, he wouldn’t have to hunt you down as a sex offender, and Scott on this hero kick is doing things to me--I’m _something_ , alright.”

“...bi?” Derek offered, frowning over.

“... _something_.  Okay, sorry.”  He flicked it to play again, and was soon elbowing Derek happily.  “Okay, look, look, they have _less than a 1% chance_ of winning at this point, after that out.  Look--look--”

Derek put a hand out to steady the phone, listening.  Their food lay in its bags, forgotten. By the time Vin Scully intoned “The Mets are not only alive, they are well!  And they WILL play the Red Sox in Game 7 tomorrow!”, they’d been huddled around Stiles phone for nearly four hours.  

“Oh my god,” Stiles sighed, tipping cold curly fries in his mouth.  “We could watch game seven.”

Derek paused, chewing.  “...ugh,” he frowned out the foggy window.  “Adele over here just lit candles.”

“ _Nice_ ,” Stiles leaned over.  “Can you smell ‘em from here?  I bet they’re, like, whatever Yankee Candle Company thinks passion smells like.”

“What.”  Derek felt his nose wrinkling.

“Well I know not to seduce _you_ with candlelit dinners,” Stiles snorted.  “Why’re you so prejudiced against jizz candles, man?  Those craftsmen really work up a sweat.”

Burgers were not easy to breathe, so Derek coughed for a bit, before jerking to stare out the window again.  “...they kicked one over…”

Stiles crawled half in his lap, wiping frantically at the glass, as the occupants of their neighbouring car spilled out shrieking.  The flickering lights were growing, Rihanna’s “We Found Love” still blaring from the open doors.

“...he’s putting her out with Chardonnay,” Derek narrated, as they watched one highschooler dump a bottle over the other’s head.  

Stiles was half-collapsed in giggles, leaning his head on Derek’s shoulder.  “...best...date...ever,” he gasped, and Derek leaned away, feeling his face heat.

“...I’m _twenty-two_ , Stiles.”

“...I know,” Stiles lifted his head, watching the incoherent screaming outside.  He backed out of Derek’s lap, flopping beside him so gracefully the jeep rocked. “I think we can all learn from this, though.  If you’re considering small spaces, flailing limbs, and flammables, pick best two out of three.”

“You’re _sixteen_ ,” Derek emphasized.

“...seventeen, actually,” Stiles blinked at him.  “That’s how we found out about the ADHD. Surprise!”  He flailed jazz hands. “Or I couldn’t drive you around 24/7.  Every employee at the sheriff’s station knows my face and when I turned seventeen, so I was not getting away with anything.”

“That’s a _five-year-difference_ ,” Derek felt his fangs beginning to show.

“...dude,” Stiles frowned, sipping his root beer.  “You’re thinking I, like, waited until you were a mess and got you out here alone to what, vomit feelings at you?  And my age is the _only_ problem?   _No_.  No, no, no gross highschool boners today.”

“Oh.”  Derek cleared his throat, feeling his face heat further.

“...did you seriously think this was my A-game?  I think I’m offended,” he balled up the last wrapper, and tossed it over his shoulder to the front of the jeep.  “Makeout Point and cold burgers? Dude. Restaurants exist. _Eggrolls_ exist.  Baseball teams sell tickets.  It is _baseball season_.  Do you even know me?  I’d be playing Black Keys’ _Howlin’ For You_ as I pulled up outside your loft, carrying some huge bouquet of something prickly that meant, I dunno, be happy, and protection, and helped ward off unhelpful vets.  I’d make _peanut butter heart truffles_ , I know how to do that, do not test my capacity to find recipes on the internet.”

Derek hugged his knees, letting his arms hide his face.  Stiles leaned to thump shoulders again.

“...your _whole body_ is blushing, man, if this is--you need to _raise your standards_.  I’d--I’d consult my _spirit wolf_ ,”

“Your what.”

“I would,” Stiles crowed.  “And she’d make sure _under threat_ that I got us matching Three Wolf Moon shirts--”

Derek’s lungs caught.

“--and Three Wolf Moon _blankets_ , for watching old Mets games in the back of cars, and probably like posters and awful statuettes and a whole set of throw pillows and a bedspread--oh, and American Werewolf in London posters too--”

To their mutual horror, Derek started to audibly sob.

Stiles went very still, his heartrate skyrocketing.  “...do not bite my face with your teeth, but--” He began tucking the plaid blanket around Derek’s head and shoulders.  Once the muffling was complete, he laid a hand between Derek’s shoulder blades, cautiously rubbing his back. “...enough about her, then.  I’d definitely get baseball tickets. Shirts that say shit like ‘I get to third base’ and ‘You’re killin’ me, Smalls!’ and ‘Balls deep’--” he snickered.

Derek groaned.

“We’d eat all the hot dogs and go on the kissing cam.  I mean it’s not very romantic, but like it’d be so awkward trying to sneak you in normal stuff like school dances, y’know.  We’d have to dance on the roof or something. You’d have to just throw me up there first, like a backpack.” He just let his mouth run stream-of-consciousness, letting Derek cry over his sister, and Erica, and Boyd.  “Then you’d climb up there like Spiderman, and I’d be like ‘Yeah, baby, lookit those muscly arms,’ and I’d have protected a disco ball with my body and we’d have a boombox and I’d look awesome in my dress--”

Derek’s shoulders shook from an overload of feelings, mostly disbelief.  “Wh--why are you in a dress?”

“I don’t know, man, it’s prom, do you want a dress?  You can have a black leather dress. We can both rock dresses, my friends from Jungle will pick them out, we can kick that disco ball around, make some goals--”

“Shut _up_ , Stiles--” he gasped, wiping his face.

“Sure,” Stiles slurped his lukewarm root beer equably.  

“...what,” Derek whispered into his hands, still breathless.

“I don’t even know.  Dude. I panicked. This is news to you, but I’m not _actually_ Batman, my mouth just starts going, like the worst oil spill in history, killing all the fish, lubricating all the sea birds--”

“You’re _nothing_ like Batman,” Derek lifted a corner of the blanket to frown over from under it, and Stiles’ mouth fell open.

“I so am.  I’m the smart one with no superpowers.  I’m not Superman,” he smacked Derek’s shoulder with the back of his hand, “I’m not your sister _Superwolf,_ ” he rolled his eyes, and Derek laughed wetly.  “I’m not _Wonderwolf_ , saving the world with love and optimism--”

“...Wonder Woman is _Scott?”_ Derek wrinkled his nose.

“He had no idea what had happened with Brainiac burning your planet down, and only two Kryptonians escaping--” Stiles raised his eyebrows.  “ _Batman_ was really--wait, if this is a story I’m channeling from my _spirit wolf_ , it’d be...what.  Wolfman? Batwolf?  Am I Batwolf?”

“...you aren’t a wolf.”

“No, no, that’s fair, but she didn’t _include_ any non-wolves, and I hate to risk her wrath--”

“...you can be Batman, I don’t care.”

 _“Batman_ was suspicious of Superman, as he _should_ be, all that looming around, invading Skype sessions and bedrooms--but the SuperWolfFriends got together and murdered the shit out of Brainiac.  And Batman let Superman stay at the mansion, and drove him around in the Batmobile--” he patted Roscoe’s wheelwell.

“...this is about as awful as one of Laura’s stories.”

“My spirit wolf says you’re an ungrateful mutt.  So once Brainiac was dead, you found Kryptisaac the Superdog in a _grave_ somewhere, and should have just taken him to Deaton’s--”

“This might be _worse_ than one of Laura’s stories.”

“You should definitely get him fixed.  He’s gonna start humping Scott’s leg, make everyone vom--”

“--wait, shouldn’t Scott be Robin?”

“Yes, yeah, Scott is Robin,” he snorted.  “And Gerardizarro is out there roaring “ME MOUNTAIN ASH” somewhere--”

“I’m gonna finish the last two burgers,” Derek tried, trying a pincer-like subject changing strategy before the ‘Your stories are stupid’ argument got too familiar and raw.

 _“No,_ ” Stiles’ eyes narrowed.  “You are in _my_ car, listening to _my story_ \--”

“Aren’t you already in trouble for the last kidnapping--”

“You can have _one_ burger,” Stiles held it out.  

Derek used the other pincer of his subject-changing attack: mention the Mets.  “You’re just gonna drool on the wrapper if you put that game back on--”

“Are you saying the Mets are _less important_ than _relative burger heat_ , Derek, because I’d hate to have to call my dad in on a 10-91b.”

“What does--”

“It’s code for a _noisy animal_ , dude, keep up.”

The swell of music for game seven of the 1986 world series drowned out their simultaneous chomping into cold burgers.  Hours later, in the grey light of dawn, Stiles awoke in the humid air of a sealed vehicle to a chill air against his side.  He groaned, trying to kick a leg straight.  It hit the metal under the window, and he curled in the blankets again, accepting his future of legs bent at 45 degree angles, like a cartoon cowboy.  Moments later he jerked awake again to a knock at the back window, and the flashing lights of a squad car. He moaned, pulled a burger wrapper off his neck, and opened the back. His dad took stock.

“Am I gonna see any condoms in there?”  The Sheriff pulled him out, eyebrows raised.

“Whuh,” Stiles rubbed his face.  “Nuh. Friend. His, uh, his sister died.  And I guess his dog.”

“You guess?” The Sheriff tipped him upright as he flailed out of the back of the back.  

“Definitely dead.  I’m gonna...school?” he blinked up blearily.

“Saturday.”

“Back to sleep,” Stiles turned away.  “Back to the loving posterior of the only woman who loves me.”

“...yeah.  I’ll see you later.”  The Sheriff walked away, shaking his head.  Later that day, Derek’s phone chimed for a text alert.

 

Stiles:  big spoon is awesome but

Stiles:  you know you woke up and called me kate

Stiles:  then snuggled in and called me jennifer  

Stiles:  then said I smelled good and I’ll take the compliment but this sounds like a scary orgy to be invited to

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, comments and kudos brighten my day every time I get that email, so if you're like "but I feel stupid just writing 'wooo!'"...I do not feel stupid reading 'wooo!', I feel HONOURED AND JOYOUS. There's an actual hallelujah chorus that pops up around my head when I get kudos...


	6. And one long rambling weekend of conversation that never happened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the SOMEWHAT STRESSFUL events of season 3A, Stiles hauls Derek out of his dismal loft and on a road trip.

The sound of Stiles’ jeep horn was distinctive, incessantly bleating from the parking lot.  Derek finally grabbed for his buzzing phone, but at the shouted “Come out, we’re going dinosaur hunting,” he hung up.  

It started buzzing again, slightly out of sync with the honking, and he finally roared to shake the windows and tapped the answer icon again.  “Buzz _off_ , Stiles.”

“Noooope, will not, come _on down_ for the adventure of a lifetime, Derek.  You literally _cannot_ pass this up.”

Derek let his arm fall back to the floor, unable to look away from the hole in his wall.  

“Come on, man, I’ll come sing outside your door.  You know I’ll do it. I’ll sing Mr. Rogers’ theme song outside your door for the next week, which is a pity, because I already made _dinosaur hunting_ reservations.”

“No.”

“I can’t hear youuu~” Stiles sang, yawning, “Because you’re _packing_ for a weekend of _dinosaurs_ , which means I don’t have to drag your little werewolf ass down here or _go tell Scott_ to bring ice cream and Nicholas Sparks movies over to cheer you up.  His mom’s got ‘em, I am not kidding--they watch them and _cry_ together into their ice cream.  He will _do_ this, and he will honestly think it’s _helpful_ , and you will not be able to escape his hopeful brown eyes and crooked smile, you’ll be next to him while he bawls over _A Walk To Remember_ , it’s not pretty, Derek, there are tears, there is snot--” the honking continued.

“...I’m coming,” he slowly sat up, rubbing his face.  “Shut up. I’m coming down.”

“You have ten minutes,” the smugness in Stiles’ voice magnified, but the honking finally slowed to every thirty seconds or so, jarring Derek’s hands into movement while he stood staring blankly into his bathroom mirror.  When he slid into the passenger seat, tossing a duffel bag in the back, Stiles drummed happily at the steering wheel. “Yessss you packed your lil _wolf pack_.  So convenient of you to den in the creepy warehouse district, dude, I was honking out here for ages at ass-o-clock and nobody’s called the police.”

“What,” Derek let his eyes fall closed, absorbing the smells of engine grease, worn vinyl, and old fast food wrappers.  Something hit his thigh. He frowned down at the pack of Reese’s, and Stiles waggled his eyebrows.

“You came. Good wolf! Treat for you.”  He craned to see over the seats as he backed out, ignoring Derek’s defeated growl and whooping as he gunned the engine.  “Come on, a weekend with Stiles! Road trip! Wooo!”

“Why,” Derek slid a claw along the edge of the orange packet, letting a peanut butter cup slide into his hand.  There was an out of place smell--condom packages, Derek realized, in Stiles’ sweatshirt pocket.

“ _Because_ ,” Stiles leaned his elbow on the steering wheel, turning to waggle his eyebrows, and Derek grabbed for the roll bar.

“Drive or pull over!”

“I am driving, dude, she knows what to do, don’t you, babe,” he patted the dashboard, narrowly missing an oncoming car.  

“ _Stiles,_ ” Derek hissed around the peanut butter cup.

“Ugh, like you’ve ever come to harm in _Roscoe_ ,” Stils rolled his eyes.  “My brave and honourable steed.  She fought a kanima for us, Derek.”

“Why,” Derek bared his teeth, “am I,” he paused again, to let Stiles keep up, “in this jeep?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I interrupt your misery time?  Here, lemme lean across and open the door, you can just heal up after you bounce down the highway.”

“ _Stiles_.”  Derek grabbed his door, wary.

“Scott couldn’t come!  He’s investigating some guy his mom wants to date--there are some real creepers around, as you _know_ ,” he rolled his eyes.  “I did my _best_ , though, I even told him we _slept_ together and threatened him with details on your hygiene--”

Derek didn’t even have a reply to that, his mouth stuck in the open position.  

“I was all ‘twice, dude,’ but she’s meeting this rando in a bar tonight, and after last time, I mean can you blame him--” Stiles shuddered.  “--y’know, now that he _knows_ Peter, I wonder if he’d forgive you kill-stealing there.  Anybody would have done it.”

An entire weekend, Derek reflected.  Him, alone with the underage son of the sheriff, all elbows, sex drive, and impulsive decisions.  “...are we escaping the police,” Derek glanced over his shoulder. “Now I’m not accused of murder, I’m a _sex offender_.”

“No!  No. No, no, no,” Stiles laughed, as though the idea of Derek charged with invented felonies was unlikely and hilarious.  “Scott couldn’t tell anyone, he’d be too busy trying not to gag. I can make him puke in his mouth talking about blowing my nose, dude, he lives in _terror_ of the day I can detail my sex life.”

After a moment’s thought, Derek grimaced.  “...stop telling the local True Alpha lies about me.  I’m already…”

“What?”

“...he’s made it clear he won’t be in a pack I’m in.”

“Oh, yeah, Scott hates you.  You’re still pack, though.”

“No.”

“Yeah, man.  I’m in his pack, and you’re mine.”

Derek felt his cheeks heat at the last word.  “...that’s not how it works.”

“That’s how it’s workin’.  I mean you already kinda live like a trash-trawling omega, but--”

Ducking his head, Derek resisted a growl.

“--guess I shouldn’t judge your dumpster-hobo aesthetic--”

The growl won, and Stiles snickered.  

“You’re the one who invited me--” Derek redirected the subject away from omegas, remembering the stench of old sweat, rotten food, and despair on the one he’d chased away from Isaac, and the blood-spattered mess it’d made of the ambulance while partially consuming a _human corpse_ , and its pleading in the woods, hung in the tree for Gerard’s demonstration.  “--and what do you mean, you made _reservations_ ,” Derek asked carefully, having some of his own.

“It’s just two nights, dude, road trips are awesome.”

Stiles was not Kate, Derek reminded himself, or Jennifer, and really anywhere that took reservations was probably preferable to his loft (and all the corpses he could smell every time he came in the door), or the (wolfsbane-and-gunpowder scented) back of Kate’s SUV.  Not that Stiles had _yet_ done the things he’d...grown to expect, but he allowed himself to think out loud, since they apparently had plenty of time.  “...when I passed out from the wolfsbane, you could have let me die.”

“What?”  The jeep swerved slightly, as Stiles’ casual elbow slid off the steering wheel.

“I threatened to kill you if you didn’t help me.  But I passed out. You could have just...buried me somewhere.”

“We sent Scott in to storm the enemy stronghold,” Stiles snorted.  “Kinda a waste. I thought you’d murder me for punching you, though.”

The ‘we sent Scott’ was more reassuring than ‘You made him go’.  Derek took a steadying breath. “You bandaged me up. Kind of.”

“Yeah.  If this is finally a ‘Thanks, Stiles, you’re the best,’ it’s not really coming across.”

“Jennifer found me the same way you did, by her car.  She wasn’t as...worried about the bleeding.”

“Well I guess she _did_ know you’d heal--” Stiles frowned at Derek’s ducked head, and set jaw.  “Wait, are you in the _habit_ now of stumbling around bleeding in parking lots?  Why didn’t you call m--wait, did she just, like, climb on your dick, blood everywhere?”  The sentence had redirected as he noticed Derek’s ears flushing red.

“You’d have made sure I wasn’t _bleeding,_ ” Derek addressed the glove compartment levelly, feeling a strange compulsion to trust, but verify.

“Uh,” Stiles glanced over, wide-eyed.  “Yeah, no. No bleeding. You were still _bleeding_?  You didn’t think _maybe_ she was a _tad,_ like, _evil_ \--” he stopped, lips thinning.  “Why didn’t you just, y’know, de-throat her?  With your teeth?”

“I’m not a _killer_ , Stiles,” Derek didn’t need to re-examine his judgement calls, again.  “And in the pool. You’d just seen I couldn’t take that thing. You could’ve just dropped me.”

“You are such a--”

Derek waited, shoulders hunched, to hear what he was, but Stiles just threw his hands in the air with a yell, driving somehow more accurately with only his knees against the wheel.  When no helpful noises came from Stiles’ side of the car, he continued. “...and then at the hospital. With Jennifer. You needed to find your _dad_ , but you came back to…” _make sure I was okay_ , he thought, swallowing.

“Punch you several times in the face,” Stiles said through clenched teeth.  “This is gonna be a great time. Let’s all marvel at the murdertunities I’ve resisted.  I’m confused about it right now, actually.”

“Is it because I’m…” _yours,_ Derek’s brain supplied.   _You said your..._ “Pack.  Your pack.”

“Hell no, you were some creeper threatening to kill me,” Stiles rolled his eyes.  

“But you told Scott I’m...I’m not in his pack, but…”

“What are you even getting at, dude,” Stiles sighed.

“Shut up, Stiles.” Derek let his head thud against the window, closing his eyes.  Stiles started some kind of frustrated monologue on his left, but it was a bit hard to focus, wondering whether he was in a pack or wasn’t, wondering whether his sexual decisions over the next couple of days would get him arrested for molesting a minor, or whether _Scott_ would hear about it if Derek didn’t let Stiles talk him around into using the condom crinkling in his sweatshirt pocket.  How long before he was robbing graves, if everyone shunned him entirely. If Stiles had intended to bring Scott, this probably wasn’t an elaborate virginity-losing plot.  Surely after a decade or so, his luck was changing. _Ha_.

“Maybe you should talk to her,” Stiles was saying.  “She knows about all this stuff, and Lydia said she had like four degrees in psychology, you could probably get an appointment somewhere that isn’t the highschool.”

“...are you suggesting _therapy_?” Derek frowned over.

“Pick a week of your life, and I’ll justify therapy,” Stiles grinned at the challenge.

Derek blinked at him, then grimaced.  “Oh. No, you--you’re right.”

“If she turns out to be evil--” Stiles cocked his head.  “We’ll keep an eye on her. And don’t _bang_ her, jesus.”

“I--I’m not going to--”

“You can take your _phone_ in, _Derek_ , and if she climbs all up in your _anything_ you’re gonna call--”

“Ghostbusters?” Derek smiled faintly at the idea of Stiles, the cavalry.  

“Or try saying ‘no’, or use your werewolf muscles and just like--hold her head three feet away, dude, her arms are shorter than yours.”

“This happen a lot to you?” Derek folded his arms, huddling into his sweatshirt.

“Hell no,” Stiles snorted.  “I said _hell yes_ the _one time_ someone felt me up, and I didn’t have a condom, and she _died_ , and that’s why I always, always carry condoms now.”

“...I’ve been smelling them,” Derek wrinkled his nose.  “In the glove compartment, and your bag, and...your pocket...the first aid kit--”

“Somebody needs to sex me up, I am prepared, _this_ time,” Stiles nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.  They were getting a little shiny, which seemed a _bit_ over the top for emotion surrounding a lost hookup opportunity.

“What do you mean she--oh,” Derek grimaced.  “Jennifer. Killed her. That’s why you kept yelling about being a virgin.  I don’t think...probably a condom would have...she’d have just killed _both_ of you.”

“Condoms save lives,” Stiles forced a grin.  “Who knows.”

“...Maybe you can shove handfuls in the next Darach’s face, and run.”

“That is an amazing plan.  Choke her with condom packages.  Let’s not have any more Darachs, though.  I’m keeping a _closer eye_ on who you date, dude.”

“...fine,” Derek frowned down at the remaining peanut butter cup.  It’d gone soft. He dropped the whole thing in his mouth and licked the wrapper, hearing Stiles’ heart thump unevenly.  “Making sure I get...flowers and things. Sounds--”

“Making sure you don’t _die_ , man, you are not good at...seeing signs.  Huge signs. Huge _danger danger_ this person doesn’t care if I bleed out signs--”

“She also tried to get me to pretend I was dead, so nobody would know to check on me,” Derek huffed a laugh, morbidly entertained.

“Holy _shit_ , dude, _Derek_ , what the _fuck_ \--”

“I wasn’t...thinking well,” he bit his lips.  “With her. Around her, I mean, if she was close, I couldn’t--”

“Well, and you were a bloody pile of roadkill after Cora and Boyd--”

“No,” Derek paused at that image, then fiddled with the wrapper for a long several minutes.  Stiles smacked it out of his hand and tossed over an unopened package.

“Fuel.  Derek. Keep talking, you wound down, there.”

“Since,” Derek drew a shaky breath.  “Since Kate.”

“What,” Stiles’ voice had dropped threateningly, which would have been funnier in a teenager who assembled fewer self-igniting molotov cocktails.

“I freeze,” Derek said quickly, opening the Reese’s cups for something to do.  “Sometimes.”

Stiles took a long, deep breath.  “...that actually explains a few things.”  He patted around behind his seat before dumping the whole bag of individually wrapped Reese’s packs in Derek’s lap.  “Best therapy I got until I can drop you off with Morrell and, like, watch from the window like a judgmentally unsexy gargoyle.”

“ _You’re_ gonna protect _me_ ,” Derek grinned over.  

“Hell yeah, man, I’ll spray her with a hose.”

Derek rubbed his face to disguise his smile broadening, and leaned his head against the window to watch the hills of southern California.  The knowledge that all the sex supplies weren’t stocked for this weekend and him in particular was...good. “...that’s the bar, now? Won’t kill me?  I thought I was supposed to get chocolates.” He waggled his eyebrow at the half-smashed bright orange bag, then fished out another two-pack.

Stiles cocked his head.  “I mean there might be people out there who want to buy you chocolates and _then_ murder you, so, priorities.  I thought--” he cut off.

“What.”

“Nothing.  Do you, like, _want_ to start dating?”

Derek choked on his mouthful of candy.  “ _Stiles_ \--”  

“I mean, are we having a Guy Talk now?”

“A what.”

“You know, like, locker rooms.  You say you like brunettes or something.  I say I like brains.”

 _Oh_ , Derek thought, listening to the road noise with his head against the window.   _Right_.  His brains had never been the attribute people commented on.

“You still in there?”

“I don’t usually think about it,” Derek said stiffly.

“S’fine, buddy,” Stiles glanced over, mouth twitching.  “You’re the one who keeps…”

“What,” Derek hugged himself tighter.

“Nothing.”  About five minutes and half the bag of Reese’s later, Stiles cleared his throat.  “...when did you last eat, dude.”

“What,” Derek growled from within his haystack of wrappers.

“You look like it’s been snowing huge orange snowflakes over there.  When did you eat? Last night?”

“...these are fine,” Derek glanced up as Roscoe changed lanes, then pulled off following the signs to an IHOP.  

“According to my _dad_ , Roscoe is drawn to bacon grease,” Stiles said with bated fury.  “I guess you eating it is fine, though, do werewolves even get clogged arteries?”

“...I’ve been eating this vegetable paste salad all morning,” Derek held up an uneaten pack.  “So no.”

“I’ve seen beans in salads,” Stiles agreed, lightly punching his shoulder, and climbing out.  “Come on.”

Derek sat in the passenger seat until Stiles turned around at the curb, and came back to knock at his window.  

“You can return to your den later,” he yelled through the glass.  “Come on, asshole, you can hide in a booth.” He cracked up as Derek opened the door, and a cascade of fluttering orange wrappers covered his shoes.  

 

Once they had their six orders of bacon, Derek was prodding the butter around on a massive stack of pancakes, and Stiles had his elbows braced on the table to support a burger the size of his head, their exhausted server retreated to lie against the counter with a coffee mug pressed to their cheek.

“Never working in food service,” Stiles shoved a quarter of the burger in his mouth.

“How _do_ you make your money?” Derek asked again, idly, striping his pancakes with maple syrup, then crosshatching it with huckleberry.

“Nah,” Stiles said, possibly, through a quarter of a burger.  

Derek didn’t look up.  His ears already told him more than he wanted to know about Stiles’ full mouth.

“Vrum,” Stiles continued.  “ _Fo_.”

“That’s fascinating,” Derek rolled his eyes.  

“Whatever.  This is _a-maaaay-zing_ \--so.”

Taking a chance on Stiles’ clear enunciation, Derek glanced up to see him stuffing bacon in his mouth.  “...so?” He tried a bite of the pancakes, and sighed, fighting a smile.

Stiles snorted.  “Mmf. Fo.”

“You said that.  I think.”

“In the Sierra Nevadas, over a century ago,” Stiles swallowed, and started his story in a spooky voice.

Derek paused, forkful of pancake poised halfway to his mouth.  “Are you about to tell me a _ghost_ story?”

“Maybe?” Stiles raised his eyebrows, taking a defiant bite of his burger.

Derek waved around at the sunlit family restaurant.  “There’s a toddler trying to bathe in mustard over there.”

“ _Over a century ago,_ ” Stiles narrowed his eyes.  “A stagecoach train of settlers from--”

“Is this the Donner Party?  Because Laura _loved_ telling me that story.  She said it was a battle royale of Missouri vs the Nevadas.”

“...this is a totally different story of 19th century California carnage, but I really want to hear that version now.”

“That’s about it,” Derek selected a piece of bacon.  “I mean, they were all wolves.”

“Of course,” Stiles grinned at him, and Derek ducked his head, poking at his pancakes and trying to comprehend the day he was having.

“My settlers were _Spanish_ settlers,” Stiles began again, and Derek felt his mouth quirk.

“Oooo.”

“ _Obviously_ superior to your settlers,” his spooky voice faded as he tried not to snicker.

“Mine were _wolves_ ,” Derek found himself saying, apparently possessed by the ghost of his ten-year-old sister, and felt his cheeks warm.  

“Mine,” Stiles tried to build suspense by stuffing his face with more burger, chewing, and swallowing enough to talk, “were thirty-seven men, women, and children, who were partying like it was 1878, celebrating the feast of St. Roderick--” he smirked, taking another huge bite, and Derek rolled his eyes.

“St. Roderick doesn’t have much detail on Wikipedia, and possibly for good reason--” abruptly, the spooky voice was back--“because according to the _only eyewitness account_ , the celebration was an _orgy_.”

Derek coughed, grabbing for his hot chocolate.  “What?!”

“Yeeeesss,” Stiles drug out the spooky voice like a nerd, and Derek felt his head cock automatically.  “During their _riotous orgy_ , the settlers began to burn the surrounding trees--”

“I’m getting _so much better_ at spotting bad decisions,” Derek raised his eyebrows, somewhat impressed.

“Right?  I mean ‘ol Rodger’s feast day is March 13th, so there was a chance of it not causing a massive wildfire…” he trailed off, thoughtful.  “Do you think that’s where we get the word ‘rogering’?”

“ _Anyway,_ ” Derek supplied, now invested, “They camped on a strange mountain and just started having sex surrounded by a bunch of entire trees in flames--”

“Yeah, right, they were _geniuses_ , and their priest, Father Justus Martinez, was like ‘Y’know Imma go over here in this tent outside the pillars of flame,’ just in time, _Derek_ ,” he leaned forward, eyes sparkling, “for _winged demons_ to _swarm_  from the trees, slashing them with razor-sharp claws and eating their faces, _which_ he wrote about at length in his journal, here--” he frowned at his burger, gingerly tried to put it down, sighed, and leaned against the table, nudging his phone with his face.  Derek, who didn’t have meat juices running down his elbows, grabbed it, turning it on to see the gallery open to an image that read:

_“My God. My God. They are all gone. The winged demons have risen! What sin have they committed against each other and thy sacred earth. May the forgiving Lord not abandon their souls, which were taken from them into the depths of hell! And through the earthly fires of man, a sole tree remained on the mountain’s peak. And the Devils that spared me, returned to the refuge of the Lone Pine on the Mountain.”_

He snorted and Stiles growled around his bite of burger, waving it at him.  Derek grinned, clearing his throat and reading it aloud in a voice he thought Laura would have approved of.

Stiles beamed at him, and swallowed.  “Two months later, the _rotted corpses_ of the thirty-seven men, women, and children--”

“Did you want more coffee,” asked their server, dully, swaying near their table.

 _“Yes_ ,” Stiles nodded, leaning to slurp the remains of his coffee through the straw he’d smugly stuck in it before starting his burger.  They filled it, walking into a couple chairs as they wandered away. “...man, night shift, or they’re just a zombie,” he watched them go, eyes wide.

Derek vacuumed through a few layers of his pancakes during the distraction, uncertain how detailed the rotten corpses were going to get.

“Anyway, some copper miners found the victims, and the priest staggered into a mission weeks later--probably the Mission San Gabriel Archangel--without any supplies, having taken a vow of silence after seeing, like, _beasts damned by the good lord_.”  He waggled his eyebrows for some reason, and Derek resisted returning the smile.  “But! These _Lone Pine Mountain Devils_ were murdering people everywhere, like, look, these people are dead in the snow with no food or warm clothes!  Obviously the Devil! So there are all these accounts describing it as being anything from a multi-winged bat to a…” he paused, finishing his burger to make finger quotes, _“‘traditional’_ demon with two legs, two winged arms or wings and arms, and a tail, to--” he pointed at his phone.  “Flip left.”

“Why didn’t you just make a powerpoint,” Derek did so, resisting the urge to flip a few more times, just to see how long this was likely to go.  It looked suspiciously like a feathered Jurassic Park raptor. “...what.”

Stiles had been casually dabbing at his hands with a napkin, but at Derek’s disbelief he smacked the table.  “ _Right?!_ It’s a _dinosaur_ , Derek, _look at it._ ”   

Derek did so, eyes on the image suspiciously as he slid the phone back to Stiles.  

“It was seen again in 2003,” Stiles grabbed some more bacon.  “Apparently only when people are disrespecting the woods, that’s really vague, or unbelievers?  So, like, believe or die, I guess-- _but_ ,” he sipped his coffee, “--there have been a _lot_ of sightings recently, and a whole _group_ of highschool students went missing last year.”  

“You brought me out here to see a werewolf fight a dinosaur,” Derek realized, leaning back in his seat to appreciate a slice of bacon.

“Weeellllll,” Stiles drew the word out.  “I mean. No. Not that that wouldn’t be _awesome_ , but there is supposed to be a whole swarm of them.  I didn’t haul you all the way out here to feed you to velociraptors, no.”

Allowing for some excitement in his heartbeat, that sounded true.  “You brought me out here so you won’t _have_ to fight a velociraptor?”

“Are you saying you don’t want to see dinosaurs, because I don’t believe you,” Stiles set his jaw.  

“This is what you and _Scott_ do,” Derek poked at his remaining soggy pancake.  

“Scott was busy--”

“This has been going on for _years_.  You could have waited.”  Derek’s frown intensified.  

“Come on, you’ve seen Jurassic Park, it’s a _dinosaur,_ Derek.  You have to want to see the dinosaur, you’re a werewolf, but you’re still a _person_ , right?!”

“Razor-sharp claws,” Derek let his eyebrows convey his lack of enthusiasm.

“It says it only eviscerates people who disrespect the woods.  And orgies, I guess, we can keep our pants on, right? You can resist marking all the trees?”

“As a werewolf, I do need to mark all the trees,” Derek grabbed the last three slices of bacon, and Stiles gasped with outrage.  “Every single tree.”

“You better get started on the coffee, then,” Stiles rolled his eyes.  “So if I was a ‘wolf, the entire Beacon Hills area would be, like, _redolent_ with the smell of--”

 _“No,_ Stiles, I do not _mark_ ,” Derek rolled his eyes.

“Oh, see, that’s good, because I was about to ask about my house, and tires, and if that’s why Scott keeps whipping his clothes off--”

“Where _exactly_ are we going?”

“The Rustic Oasis motel, it’s in Olancha.  Says you can see your werewolf trees--”

“My what now--”

“--and mountains and everything, there are stars, I brought earplugs if you wanna howl.”

“...stars.”  

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d love it in the middle of town.”  His heart beat a little unevenly, and Derek focused on him like a sniper scope.  

“You keep _lying_.”

 _“Fine_ , alright, I was looking for something in the middle of nowhere and there was another one with little cabins, but this one has a _jerky store_ across the street.   _A jerky store_ , dude, I am _weak_ , I did not rent us a cabin.”  After a long silence from the other side of the table, he frowned over to see Derek’s shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.  “That’s the entirety of our souvenirs and meals,” Stiles’ eyes narrowed. “Your carnivore ass should _get_ me on this one, man, _jerky_.”

“...that was not what I was expecting.”

“You thought I wanted to feed you to the velociraptor, I get it, but remember I am not your hot homocidal hookup, okay,” he sat his hot chocolate down next to the coffee to make jazz hands at Derek, “These hands _help_.”

 

Once back in the jeep, Derek let the blurring landscape lull his eyes closed.  When the engine stopped, he startled awake outside what appeared to be the hotel from Psycho.  “What,” he dodged Stiles’ foot flailing in his face as he dug around in the back seat, then just climbed out.  There was a woman waving from the office, so he went over, confirming their reservation with nods. After a few minutes of shrugging in reply to her tourism suggestions, he gave in, and told her he’d been drug along on a dinosaur hunt.  

From the car, Stiles heard a throaty laugh and saw the counter lady slide her hand in Derek’s back pocket, and left the bags.  “Dude. No,” he put an arm around Derek’s shoulders, hauling him back out the door. “Are you serious right now? She has a Westboro Baptist Church sticker _on her confederate flag,_ this attention to detail is how you wake up next to _serial killers_.”  Derek glanced back, eyes wide.  She was making some offended noises as they left, and Stiles flailed his hands in the air.  “Did you get the key, at least?”

“Yeah,” he held it up, eyes downcast, and Stiles sighed.  

“You gotta let me run a background check before you flirt.”  He grabbed the milkshakes he’d picked up from the drive-through while Derek nuzzled the window in his sleep, and thumped Derek in the chest with one.  “And get harder to seduce, my dude.”

“Where did this come from?”

“I got it while you were drooling on the window.”

It smelled like strawberry, so he sipped it quietly, shouldering his bag, then wrinkled his nose.  “...there’s something wrong with this.”

“Ha!”  Stiles cackled.  “Too bad you were asleep.  I asked if they had rabbit shakes--”

“Off the not-a-werewolf-menu,” Derek rolled his eyes.

“Her smile didn’t even _flicker_ , man, she was like ‘I’ll add a scoop of protein to that for you,’ and I was laughing too hard to tell her no--”

“...and I didn’t wake up for any of this?”

“Nah, you were dead out, dude, I thought I was gonna have to punch you awake.  Again.”

“...that’s why you started singing _Never Gonna Give You Up_.”

“Eventually you might start punching back, man, I don’t know.”  He leaned to bump shoulders.

“I have a name,” Derek sighed, mourning the weird sandiness in his milkshake.

“I did _try_ that.  You said ‘Shut up, Stiles,’ like, call-and-response, we could have looped it on a synthesizer--”

Derek slurped some more milkshake, frowning as he considered his capacity to sleep around Stiles Stilinski, apparently nearly anywhere, with limitless noise.  He wondered if humans felt vulnerable, finding themselves deaf to extremely loud things like dog whistles and earthquakes.

“Ready for a hike, or want Chinese?  There’s a place...nearby,” Stiles frowned at his phone, as Derek paused in unlocking the door to their room.

“Hiking?”

“Yeah, wolfman, we aren’t gonna see any dinosaurs in our bedroom, I _hope_ , okaaaaay they said there’d be two twins, what is this deal,” he frowned at the full sized bed.

“...it’s a double bed,” Derek raised his eyebrows--partly at the implied proximity, partly at the head duck from Stiles, accompanied by uneven heartbeat.  “You said to be harder to seduce,” he smirked. “Hiking and a single bed, huh?”

“I mean, she wasn’t so much seducing you as harassing you.  Definitely hold out for a strawberry shake,” Stiles placed his chocolate one on the table, throwing the hotel key down next to it, and slid into the bathroom with a grateful groan and the sound of an unzipping fly.  

“There was the shake,” Derek stood in the doorway for a long moment, listening to Stiles rattle around in the bathroom, and considering his future in terms of close proximity to the Sheriff’s son.   _Be harder to seduce_ , he told himself, willing his heart to slow.  “I still would...think you’d wait and ask Scott along, for...things like this,” he tried, grimacing.

Audible through the flimsy door, Stiles’ pulse thumped weirdly again.  “Yeah, he’s got work, y’know.” He emerged with a leisurely stretch and grab for his shake, tossing his backpack on the bed, and dropping on it himself with a sigh.  

Derek perched on the edge.

“It said two twin beds on the website,” Stiles emphasized, his heart still doing the odd thing, but Derek wasn’t sure what’d he’d do, even if Stiles admitted to this now weirdly consistent untruth.  “Soooo food or hike?” Stiles looked up at him, one hand sliding the straw in and out of his milkshake, so it made an obnoxious hooting noise. Derek frowned at his phone--it was only 10:53 am.

“Hike,” he decided.  

They wandered up the Mobius trail, Stiles lingering behind.  Derek ignored the eyes on him long enough to snap a picture of the Mobius Arch, then frowned back.  “What.”

“Oh, nothing, dude.”  Stiles eyebrows were raised nearly off his face.

“ _What,_ ” Derek braced himself.  “I’m sending it to Cora.”

“Rad.”

With another suspicious glance behind him, Derek began walking again, pausing to send a better picture, with a view of the horizon behind the ancient formation, only to hear a definite snort.  “ _Stiles_.”

“I’m sorry, dude,” Stiles grinned, shaking his head.  “There’s just, y’know, that scene in Beauty and the Beast, in the snow, and Beast turns to beam all his happy fangs at Belle with, like, a bird on his head, and his whole face is like an unspoken sonnet to ‘bird’ rhyming with ‘complete freaking nerd’--”

“No,” Derek frowned at the latest shot.

“You looked just _like_ him.  Keep rollin’, dude, find your favourite, like, boulder angle, we’ve got time.”

Cora texted back to ask whether Derek had hit the lonesome road with his cowhorse, and Derek felt himself grinning, trying to get an angle that showed the whole arch.  Behind him, he could hear Stiles’ phone shutter clicking.

“Just let me take a couple, you can be in them,” long grabby fingers made for his phone, and Derek jerked it away suspiciously.  

“I don’t need to be _in_ it.”

“Hell yeah you do.  Stand over there,” Stiles pointed, tugging at the phone, and Derek surrendered it with a sigh.  “...no, okay, you’ve got headlights. Here, put on these shades.”

When Derek reclaimed his phone, a picture captioned ‘Derek rockin’ some shades in front of his new favourite rock’ had been sent to _twelve people_ , some of whose numbers he didn’t recognize.  He changed the lock screen code, glaring over.

“...it wasn’t a _nude_ , dude.”

They returned after a long desert ramble to jangle the door bells in the Merry Go Round restaurant, where Stiles remembered to ask the server for two extra servings of eggrolls.  Derek eyed them, and then him.

“What,” Stiles asked, probably, before swallowing and speaking more clearly.  “You’ve seen me eat eggrolls before. You coming up with a genius dinosaur baiting plan?”

“No,” Derek slid the eggrolls closer.

“I looked up hunting for cryptids,” Stiles’ voice dropped to a dramatic whisper.  “I have _plaster_ in the car in case we find _footprints_.”  Derek suddenly found himself unable to stop snickering.  “Stop laughing, wolfman. I’ve also got an app, it’s called _Cryptozoology_.”  

Derek’s snickers turned to wheezes.  “You have an _app_.”

“And detailed maps, flashlights, _and_ enough memory on my phone to Blair Witch Project it up.  Shut up, or I’ll report a wolfman in this Chinese restaurant on my _cryptid app_.”

Once they finished, they headed to the jerky store, where Stiles very seriously appeared to be buying them out.  

 _“This_ is why I’m here,” Derek growled, hefting the third increasingly weighty basket.  “I’m here to lug your dried animal.”

“Ooo, somebody finally has rabbit!” Stiles tossed another handful of bags at him.  “You do have to earn your right to any of this beautiful jerky--”

“How can you even afford--”

 _“Also_ , we’ll need, like bottled water, and whatever explorers pack.”

“Laura found a recipe for pemmican once.  It called for an entire ton of huckleberries and one buffalo.”

“Ha!”  Stiles grinned at him.  

They sorted through their haul in the jeep, drove to where Stiles’ heavily annotated map indicated was a likely location, and piled out.  “All right,” he stopped abruptly, squinting at Derek in the moonlight that hardly made it down through the trees.

“What,” Derek barely avoided running into him.

“Smell anything?”

“Teenager,” Derek growled.  “They’re pungent.”

“Maybe we should stay here, instead of, like, crashing around.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Come on,” Stiles stooped to dig a familiar-smelling blanket out of his bag.  “It’s _purple_.”  

“It’s _dark_ ,” Derek waved a hand in front of his face, bemused.

“Purple is still superior,” Stiles said loftily, and Derek snorted, allowing himself to be drug downward.  “We _could_ run around waving flashlights, but I brought a secret weapon.  You can listen to shit, like, a mile away.”

“Is _that_ why I’m here?” Derek asked doubtfully.  

Stiles shoved the rabbit jerky at him.  “It’s _handy._  Why do you keep--” he groaned.  “Fine. Three questions. I’ll answer three, and then we are _dinosaur hunting_.”

Derek took a breath, opened his mouth, and closed it again.  

“Tonight only.”  Stiles knocked their shoulders together.

 _“Complete_ answers,” Derek thumped him back.  “If there are details I didn’t ask about, I want those too.”

“Ugh,” Stiles groaned.  “Y’know my dad and I struck a seventy-percent honesty deal.”

“One hundred percent.”

“Ugh, _fine_.”

Derek held back a smile, his cheeks warming.  “...why am I here? You keep lying.”

“I would not _lie_ about _dinosaurs_ , dude--”

“When I ask about Scott.”

“Oh.  No. I mean, yeah, he said if I waited until after Mrs. McCall’s date, he could come, but then he was like ‘and Isaac can come too!’” he gagged, letting his head loll against Derek’s shoulder.

“...you didn’t want a pack thing,” Derek tried, swallowing.

“No, not--I didn’t want a _Scott and Isaac_ thing,” he sighed heavily.  “I’m the only thing of Scott’s Isaac does _not_ want--he’s got his pack and his girlfriend and his mom, and I dunno, he probably sniffs all Scott’s dirty lacrosse gear and sleeps on a pile of his sneakers, he’d _definitely_ wake me up in the middle of the night with his gold headlight eyes, just silently baring his teeth--”

Derek coughed, snorting, then deflated.  “Because Scott’s a True Alpha.”

“No, dude, because Isaac is a _creep_.  He doesn’t think you’re a good alpha--”

“I’m _not_ \--”

“--but he’s got some creepy crush on Scott, or wants to _be_ him, or both, I dunno.  Whatever’s going on there is more about them than you, dude.”

Derek reflected on that for a few minutes, pulling the blanket closer around them to explain the warmth he was emanating.  His eyes stung. “Uh.” He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded hoarse. “Um. You could have told Scott you wanted friend time.”

“I coulda.  I picked you, man.”

Derek’s brain stalled out for a bit over that, and he shook his head, thinking _reset_.  “How are you paying for all this?  Scott’s got an actual _job_ and he can barely afford his phone.”

“Well, I mean, a highschool job, and he’d need less phones if you didn’t steal and break them--”

“Yeah, yeah--”

“...I sell essays, man, I figured everyone knew.  I do all this research anyway, might as well get something out of it.  Mythology classes love my papers.”

“Oh,” Derek blinked into the darkness.

“The hell did you think, man?”

“I had no idea.  I know sheriffs don’t make all that much.  Huh.”

“I had no idea I was such a _mystery_ ,” Stiles shifted, probably waving his hands dramatically.  “What--”

“Ssh,” Derek tensed.  “There’re people.”

“Okay?”

“They’re drunk,” he listened intently.  “Campers, I think?”

“Eugh, we should move.”

“...they’re trying to build a _fire_ ,” Derek felt his nose wrinkle.

“History repeats,” Stiles sighed.  “ Oh. Dude,” he whispered, elbowing Derek’s side.  “Dude.”

“Ssh!  They’re _really_ drunk, they might--”

“Dude,” Stiles snickered.  “Growl at them.”

“What.”

“ _Do it_.  Go flash your eyes and growl.   _They_ won’t cause a wildfire, and _we_ can watch them run away screaming about the Lone Pine Devil.”

Taking wildfires into consideration, it wasn’t a bad idea, so Derek crept with Stiles around to the edge of the “campsite,” where one camper was sitting on a bagged tent finishing a bottle of vodka, one was repeatedly trying to unfold a lawn chair, and a third was using a barbeque lighter and a flashlight to chase fallen leaves.  

Derek took a deep breath, let his eyes glow, and _roared_.  Several minutes later, they were alone, and Stiles threw both arms around him, crowing.

“Oh my god.  Oh my god, dude, that was the best thing ever.”

“What did she think she was gonna do to me with that lawn chair,” Derek wondered blankly, nudging it with one foot.  Stiles tripped over it in the dark, grabbing Derek’s shoulder and laughing into it.

“This is the best vacation ever,” Stiles wheezed.  “Do you think she’s just always like that? She’s lucky she has friends to drag her away.”

“She’s _still_ yelling,” Derek cocked his head disbelievingly.

“That was amazing.  You’re amazing. You’re my favourite forever,” Stiles panted, sliding a casual arm around his shoulder, and leaning to breathe warmly against his neck before abruptly jerking away.  “Shit!”

“What,” Derek held his hands up, feeling a little breathless himself.

“If there _is_ anything out here, you just, like, probably _challenged_ it,” he grabbed Derek’s arm, hauling him back out of the campsite.  “Which way is Roscoe?!”

“We’re running?”

“Yeah, we’re _running_ , _Derek_ , come on already--”

“This way,” Derek pulled him towards the jeep, trying to fight down a broad grin.

“I mean--maybe--it’ll fight her--she can probably take it--” Stiles gasped, half running, half hauled over the uneven landscape.  “Jesus, just piggyback me--”

Derek stopped, mid-flight.  “...really?”

“Yeah--dude, there’s--probably nothing out here--” he pushed Derek’s shoulder so he could throw his arms around them.  Derek caught his legs as he jumped, bemused. “Giddy-yup, wolfman.”

Even perplexed as he was, Derek found Roscoe quickly, and Stiles backed out and onto the road with a squeal of tires.  Derek was fidgeting with his sweatshirt sleeves. “...there probably wasn’t anything out there.”

“Yeah, but far be it from me to put ‘challenged a dinosaur brigade, threw this werewolf at it’ on your headstone, like, it’d make for a really confusing limerick.”

Derek nodded slowly, falling quiet as they pulled in to the motel.  

Stiles was consoling himself with talk of jerky.  “...you still having that dream?”

“What?” Derek frowned over.

“Kate calling out to you.”

Derek’s shoulders hunched.  

“I just mean, maybe it’s just as well.  Single-room-bed situation. In the jeep you grabbed me like a limpet.”

Derek resisted the urge to defend his sleeping self’s virtue, remembering waking to the sound of the sheriff’s car with his face against Stiles’ forearm, breathing in scents he’d begun to identify with safety.

 

In the darkness, Derek could hear Stiles rummaging around with his bag--the sleepwear he pulled out had been worn before, and Derek tried not to obviously inhale the smells of files, ballpoint pens, ADHD medication, and a rug that needed a good vacuum to get rid of the leaves that blew in the window.  The bed squeaked as Stiles clambered in. The blankets acted as a bellows to fill Derek’s lungs with the smells of warm, clean-ish laundry, toothpaste, and skin, and he waited, perfectly still, as Stiles’ arm landed across his chest. _These hands help_ , Derek remembered.

“Jesus, dude, where are you.  Are you in the middle of the--”

Derek barely had to lean up to touch their lips together.  

Stiles shoved him away, crashing himself backwards against the nightstand and wall.  “What the fuck, dude--I just--I think I just kissed you, man.” The light switched on, illuminating Stiles’ hand reaching up under the shade.  His face was unusually hard to read.

 _Well...yeah_ , Derek thought, staring back.  As usual, the world moved on without giving him time to catch up.

“You thought,” Stiles grinned tensely at him, eyes wide.  “--what, since I picked you up?”

Derek’s mouth twitched, imitating the smile, but his stomach felt like it was slowly picking up speed in a downward slide.  Like some liquid nitrogen had gotten in there, spreading through his veins and around his lungs.

“You still think I’m gonna call up Derek ‘The Hobo’ Hale, be like ‘Yeah, let’s do it, I’m _that_ desperate, let’s burn that virginity seven months before it’s legal, let’s summon my dad like a rage demon, that sounds _worthwhile_.  Jesus, Derek, you’re such a waste of--” Stiles’ voice cut off as his eyes narrowed, his heartrate stuttering.

“I’ll sleep in the jeep,” Derek stood, filling the sudden silence by grabbing his bag and zipping it up loudly.  Usually when his life turned at an angle he wasn’t prepared for, his brain filled with white noise. For some reason, this time it was laughter.  

“No,” Stiles held a hand up, pulling himself upright.  “Wait a minute. Hang on. You--you thought I was making my play.”

It was hard to hear Stiles’ voice around Kate’s giggles.  “I can afford a taxi.” Not the jeep, he thought. Curling up with his face in old candy wrappers and a blanket that smelled like Stiles’ hockey gear was--just not.  No.

“No. Wait. _Derek_.  You didn’t--you weren’t just lying back and takin’ it because I’m a grabby virgin who saved you in a pool and got you alone,” he yanked the strap on Derek’s duffle, leaning to leverage him backwards into the room.  His words were getting higher and faster.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , I’m going-- _Stiles_.  Let go.”  He shook the bag, trying to detach the skinny human arms--there was a bench outside.  Or the roof. The night air would clear the mud in his head.  He’d be able to see for miles in the desert--the safe vantage point suddenly sounded urgently appealing.

Stiles elbowed between him and the door, wiping his face with his pajama sleeve, and trying to shove Derek back on to the bed.  “Hang _on_ , I’m sorry--”

Derek yanked his bag away, growling.  “A waste of _what?_  Space?  Oxygen? I’m sorry I--” the massive pile of specific regrets burned up his esophagus, and he covered his mouth, swallowing.  

“Derek, no, c’mon,” Stiles kept shoving at him, red-eyed, until they were both back on the bed.  “Shit,” Stiles whispered.

Derek hunched around his bag, pressing his knuckles against his eyes, and trying to breathe slowly.  He tried not to inhale the smell of Stiles’ cold sweat.

“Shit, dude.  You’re not a waste of anything.  I’m sorry.” Stiles snorted snot loudly, glancing over with a choked laugh.  “Fuck. I didn’t--I thought you were being a dick. Look at us,” he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“What do you _want_ ,” Derek took a long shaky breath.

“What do _you_ want,” Stiles giggled nervously again.  “You said _no_ , dude, so many times.  Are you taking me up on the baseball games and Three Wolf Mountain pillows?”

“You made sure we were alone outside of the county for three days in the _same bed_ ,” Derek said, all in one breath.  "You lied about the bed, you knew--"  He tried to focus on the door.

“Yeah, I mean, I did that,” Stiles rubbed his face, sniffling, but grinned over.  “But I’m seventeen, dude, and you’re not--you’re not even _gay_ , I mean bi, whatever--and you threatened to tear my _fingers_ off--”

“Every time we’re in hearing distance you talk about how hot I am,” Derek felt his gut clench again.  “Makes sense, you’re not--I--they were just examples, if I wasn’t--”

Stiles raised his eyebrows.  “What?”

“Derek ‘the _Hobo’_ Hale--”

“Oh whoa, no, I’m _sorry_ , dude, I didn’t mean--I just,” the bed bounced as Stiles turned to face him, cross-legged.  “I thought you were doing that--y’know, the Derek thing, like when Ms. Blake found you bloody in the road and you just kinda...let her, y’know.  I don’t--I’m not _like_ her, you’re hot, but don’t just _surrender_ , I don’t wanna have to remember the first dude I bang looking mildly nauseated and reciting multiplication tables in his head--”

Derek felt his nose wrinkle as he snorted.  “...what.”

“You _know_ all this, I just...I want to be vomit-inducing for the _right_ reasons, like what Scott and Allison had--” he laughed hoarsely, reaching out to twist his fingers in Derek’s t-shirt.  His pulse thrummed through them like a hummingbird’s. “Was that kiss...because you wanna be my vomit-inducing Allison. Get sundaes together.  Be goopy. Matching t-shirts.”

“You never actually wanted that,” Derek said evenly, the chill in his gut having slowly calmed his heart rate.  “Do you…” He took a deep breath. “--will you feel safe if I sleep on the floor.”

“No, I do, I do want that, we need a reset button, I want to revert to a previous save--and the website _did say_ twin beds, I swear, it's just there was a review that was like 'it was a full bed, where the hell were my twins,' so I wasn't really surprised, but I figured what the hell, _jerky store--_ ” Stiles shoved the duffle off Derek’s lap, clambering closer in alarm as Derek shrank back.  “Come on, it worked, _somehow_.  I outlined my mad boyfriending skills and you _wanted_ them.  Tell me I’m right.”

“...Stiles…”

“Did it?  You wanna board the Stiles train?  I mean I gotta be honest with you, if you so much as lift my t-shirt, my dad is gonna _know_ somehow and he’ll shoot wolfsbane hollow points and shatter every joint in your body--”

Derek’s lungs seized for a whole new reason.

“--so we _can’t_.  I mean.  I promised I’d lie to him at least 60% less.  We’d have to wait ‘til my birthday, it’s in April--”

“What,” Derek stared up from where he’d fallen back to his elbows, watching Stiles’ fervent, shaky grin.

“Are you gonna be my one true boo, dude, do I get to text you kissy faces,” Stiles crawled forward slowly, his knees on either side of Derek’s hips.  He smelled like Stiles--objectively tired and stinking of stress-sweat, but subjectively like the warmest place Derek knew.

“What,” was all he could summon, Stiles’ jeans warm against his thighs.

“Breathe,” Stiles leaned in to whisper across Derek’s ear, pressing Derek’s face between a neck and shoulder that smelled like engine oil, over-scented deodorant on sweaty skin, and laundry soap.  

Derek stiffened at the warm weight.  “You’re...” he closed his eyes. “...Lydia.”

“...if you can’t tell I’m not Lydia, I have sudden doubts about your superpowers,” Stiles laughed damply against his neck, sliding his arms up.

“...you want to...date.   _Me,_ ” Derek huffed a laugh, his eyes stinging again, as Stiles’ fingers slid through his hair.

“Well,” Stiles paused, and Derek took a shuddering breath, going tense against him.  

“Get off me. _Now._ ”

“No, shut up, I just--I like--” he stalled out again, but Derek waited, eyes shut tight.  Stiles groaned. “I--I _liked_ watching baseball with you, dude.  I’d watch--I’d watch the _Phillies_ win with you, like, we were sitting in a pile of wrappers and you were a mess, but it was a weirdly good time--”

Derek snorted loudly into Stiles’ neck, his silent laughter making the bed shake.

“I just mean--you asshole,” Stiles started snickering.  “I think we should try it, y’know, we can drink milkshakes with two straws, and I’ll buy you offensive t-shirts, and we should get some Harry Potter robes and go through that drive-through, like, chanting--”

Derek laughed aloud.  “Chanting what?!”

“I dunno, like an old ad jingle, we could just chant it in unison--”

“She’ll _shoot_ us--” the freezing void in Derek’s stomach had turned warm and sparkling--he would, he thought, probably have laughed at anything.  “You’re going to get me _shot_ on our _first date_ \--” he cut off at Stiles’ twitch.

“...I have a date,” Stiles muttered smugly into his hair.  “I have _so many dates_ , this is _awesome_ \--”

“Maybe,” Derek risked, high on adrenaline.  “Maybe I’ll be unimpressed.”

“Oh-ho-ho no,” Stiles lifted his head, grinning down.  “I will impress the _shit_ out of you.  Derek Hale,” he thumped his elbows onto Derek’s chest, so he could frown down thoughtfully.  “Will you get curly fries with me, and accept flowers and peanut butter cups, and be the target of every teenage sexual shower fantasy, so long as the Mets shall win?”

Derek tried to stop laughing long enough to answer.  “Wait, does that mean I get dumped if they lose?”

“They will not lose,” Stiles said, in his weird Batvoice imitation, and Derek laughed so hard he rolled on his side, dumping Stiles off and curling against him.  

“Yeah,” he said softly into the warm flannel, and Stiles squeezed him a little too tight.

“What, dude?” he asked, loud and casual, and Derek rolled his eyes.

“Yeah.  I...will.  Probably. I might fall asleep.”

Stiles gasped, offended, but the endorphins were hitting him too, and he giggled against Derek’s head.  “Good. Glad to, uh, hear it.” His heartbeat stuttered again, just as he lunged in to kiss up Derek’s jaw, giggling and biting at his stubble.

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek yelped, pushing him back.  “You _just_ threatened me with your _sheriff dad_ \--”

“I know, dude,” Stiles slumped back against him, laughing against his neck.  “I’ll be good. I really will, Sourwolf, just think, you’ve broken your losing streak, you know I’m sturdy, and I’m only evil a bit.  Sometimes. When they deserve it.”

“Mmm,” Derek snorted.

“Want to go for another hunt tomorrow,” Stiles whispered into the soft skin behind his ear.

“...yeah, okay,” Derek whispered back, letting himself grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO ABOUT THE BED SHARING--I do a ridiculous amount of research for fic--there's really a jerky store across the street, and I really made the choice about whether to stay at the motel or the nicer place with cabins BECAUSE of the jerky store, and they really DID promise twin beds, and then the FIRST REVIEW REALLY WAS "BUT THERE WAS ONLY ONE DOUBLE BED" and I was like "HAHAHAHA This must happen." So that was only sort of an in joke with me and the motel website.
> 
> Once the friend whose birthday this was for is back in the US, we'll probably watch the rest of the show and I'll write a continuation through season 6. Subscribe to me if you're interested! Thanks so much for reading this far! Sorry if it's a bit disjointed--I really wanted to get it posted today, but I may try to smooth some things out later. Let me know if you notice anything that needs it!


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